A retention schedule is a legal document that provides information about how to manage records over time. All King County retention schedules are displayed in the table below. The table gives you the option of choosing the General Schedule or an Agency-Specific Schedule.

• General Records Retention Schedule
  The General Schedule can be used by all county employees. It provides guidance on managing administrative records that are commonly found in most agencies.
• Agency-Specific Records Retention Schedules
  Agency-Specific Schedules are developed for individual county agencies (often at the section level). Each schedule contains a comprehensive list of all records managed by that agency (which could include records that are also on the General Schedule). The lines on each agency-specific schedule also represent the different categories that you have access to in Content Manager, which is necessary to file new records, send boxes to the Records Center or fill out a disposition request form.

All schedules are based on, and compliant with, Washington State records retention schedules. Information on this page is current and is automatically updated by our records management system (Content Manager) once per day.

Which schedule should you use?

Best practice is to start by using the Agency-Specific Schedule corresponding to the department-division-section where you work. If you're not able to find a record category that works for you, you can also use the General Schedule. Please contact Records Management at records.management@kingcounty.gov if you are having trouble locating the appropriate category on a retention schedule.

King County Records Retention Schedules

Instructions and Help

How do I search for retention schedules?

In the Search box, type any word or phrase that you know of and that might be in the title or notes/description of the record category. For example, enter budget to find all categories that contain the word budget in the title or descriptions. If, instead, you want to search the DAN (Disposition Authority Number) or state series title, select those options before performing the search.

Do not use quotation marks when performing searches for phrases. Instead enter phrases without quotation marks.  

How can I export the information in these schedules?

Export from Teams
If you want to export the data in these retention schedules to an Excel spreadsheet, the easiest way to do that is by viewing them on the Agency Dashboard on the county's internal Records Management Network Teams site. From there, you will need to filter by agency (to locate your agency-specific schedule) or choose General Schedule (to locate that schedule). Then follow the instructions on that dashboard to Export to Excel. You might be directed to request permission to view that dashboard.

Or, follow these steps:
1. Put your cursor anywhere in the first line of the schedule you want to export
2. Hold down the Shift key then click the down arrow key until you reach the bottom
3. Right click anywhere on the schedule and select Copy and then Copy Selection
4. Open a blank Excel spreadsheet, place your cursor in an empty cell (probably A1) then click Ctrl + V.

Related Links

Looking for Records?

King County Archives - historical county records
Recorder's Office - recorded documents
Vital Statistics - birth and death records
Find Public Records - various county records
Public Records Program - submit a public disclosure request