I have a site collection in an our 2010 environment which has been made read only.
On one of the items in the site there is a running workflow that has paused until 01/01/2017 (as per design).
My question is, do you know if the workflow will continue on 01/01/2017 given that the site collection is read only?
I am unable to terminate the workflow (presumably because the site collection is read only).
Workflows and Read Only Site Collections
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My GUESS, would be yes.
Do SharePoint workflows send email reminders when SharePoint site collection is in Read Only mode?
This suggests no, but in my mind that is because the workflow hasn't yet been executed. Your workflow has already been executed and in theory doesn't require any rights to continue, however, if it is running as a user and then does something like "Update an Item" you'd suspect it would fall over.
Be interested to hear other people's thoughts on this or whether they've been able to dig up other useful information on this.
Should make for something to look forward to coming back to work to after new year though right??? 
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Hi Cassy Freeman,
In my opinion the workflow will pick up as long as your timer service is running in 2010 environment. The updates to content will not happen but if there is a workflow that sends out notifications, after it comes out of pause, that will happen. We moved to 2013 recently and even though i have many "In Progress" workflows in 2010 environment, i stopped the timer service so none of the notifications are sent out. So far it has worked.
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I suspect the same Ry - it's going to send many many emails if it does fire. I mean i could take it out of read only mode, terminate the workflow and put it back but i was being lazy and hoping I didn't have to click the mouse than many times haha x
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Hi
We are in the middle of migrations so I can't just stop the timer service as some of the sites will still need it.
Thanks for the suggestion though!
I'd be inclined to play it safe. Don't want to upset the boss... 
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Response from support:
I'm afraid that the workflow will not be able to run, this is because the workflow needs to write to it's history list, so if the site is set to read only it will not be able to do this. Also if the workflow has any actions to update items or create tasks these will also not be completed.
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Another response:
If it is just sending an email then there is a possibilty that the email will be sent and then when it tries to write to the history list it will then error, although it would write to the history list when it comes out of Pause, so it would error before it sends the email.
I would recommend stopping it just in case, if you do not want the email to be sent out.
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OK so because support couldn't be 100% sure that the email wouldn't be sent before the attempted log to the history list I chickened out, took my site collection out of read only, terminated the workflow and put it back in read only.
Before I put it back in read only I created and ran another workflow that would only email me after a pause of 1 day so not the end of the world if it did run. It didn't. So there is the answer, at long last; no the workflow that is in progress will not continue to run on a site collection that has been made read only
Did the workflow terminate or was is just left hanging???
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Still "In progress". Said it was pausing for one day and then nothing after that.
Interesting. Suggests that nothing fails or kills the workflow, but that a timer job for the site collection is stopped when in read only.
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