TechTips - How to Edit How Long the Change Log File in SharePoint 2007 is Kept

SharePoint 2007 has a change log file to keep track of changes made on just about everything you can think of that is stored within the SharePoint 2007 website. The change log stores valuable data about different things that have happened on your SharePoint 2007 website and should be stored for a set amount of time. Well it's important to know how to change the amount of time you store your change log files for each website. In this guide I will explain a little more in-depth what the change log file is and how to change how long the changes are stored for.

First the Change Log File is a log file that stores any and all changes that are made to a SharePoint 2007 website. If you want some really good info about what is stored in this Change Log File check out this Microsoft site, it gives loads of details about what is stored in the file. For instance you could query the change log file to find out about recent edits, deletes, or updates. The information stored in this file can really be valuable for metrics and accountability.

So knowing that this file is very important and can have some data that might be useful you will want to make sure you are storing this data long enough. The default amount of time for the change log file entries to be kept is 20 days. So if you aren't checking the data within that time frame you might want to either be backing up the files or extend the amount of time the entries are kept.

It's a pretty simple task to extend the amount of time the entries are kept, just follow these steps:

Open Central Admin

Click Application Tab

Click Web application general settings (SharePoint Web Application Management Section)

Click Web Application Drop Down

Click Change Web Application

Click Web Application you want to change settings for

Scroll down to Change Log Section

Change number of days (set to whatever works for your setup, or set to never)

Click OK

Once you have set the number of days you want to store your entries for you are done, I prefer to set mine to 365 days that gives me 1 year of entries. Anything past a year probably isn't going to interest me that much, also I regularly backup log files so I would have a backup that I could reference anyway. If you have the drive space I would recommend setting the Change Log File to delete entries after at least 100 days. This should give you plenty of coverage of the past events. Also make sure you are backing up the Log file just to be safe.

Well I hope this guide helps you to edit how long a Change Log File in SharePoint 2007 is kept.