Techniques and solutions are described for facilitating data archival, including for improving compliance with retention policies and legal requirements. Data objects can be assigned an expiration date based on properties of the data objects and rules associated with such properties. The data objects can be stored in an archive. In some cases, the data objects can be automatically deleted when the expiration date passes. In other cases, the data objects can be manually deleted when the expiration date passes, with deletion not occurring, and an error being generated, if the expiration date has not passed. Unstructured data objects can be associated with structured data objects through association lists, where an association list can be used to delete such unstructured data objects with or without deletion of an associated structured data object, and where the unstructured data objects can be linked with retention policy information of the structured data object.