Unlicensed OneDrive accounts will be inaccessible by the end of this month

The new policy will be enabled on January 27.

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onedrive unlicensed

According to Microsoft in a new blog post, all unlicensed OneDrive accounts will be entirely inaccessible to admins and end users on January 27 if they haven’t been used in the last 93 days.

A OneDrive account becomes inaccessible when it no longer has a valid license. The Redmond-based tech giant says this could happen for various reasons: the expiration of a subscription, the removal of a permit by an admin, or even changes in the organization’s licensing agreements.

Admins are, however, notified ahead of time when users’ accounts are about to become unlicensed in OneDrive, and Microsoft offers many recommendations.

  • Setting up the Archive billing for unlicensed accounts to be able to access and edit the archived files.
  • Delete the unlicensed OneDrive account, if it does not have a retention policy applied to it.
  • Re-license the unlicensed account to maintain access.
  • All purview features work with archived unlicensed OneDrive accounts, including retention policies, legal holds, and eDiscovery search & export. 

As soon as the OneDrive accounts become inaccessible, they will get archived, and accessing them will require admins to enable a special billing, the first of its kind.

  1. Storage Fees: Archived unlicensed accounts now incur a storage fee of $0.05 per GB per month.
  2. Reactivation Costs: Reactivating an archived account costs $0.60 per GB, providing 30-day access.
  3. Operational Expenses: Managing unlicensed accounts involves additional administrative tasks and costs.
  4. Compliance and Security: Properly archiving and billing unlicensed accounts helps mitigate security and compliance risk.

To access unlicensed OneDrive accounts, admins will have to go to SharePoint admin center > Reports > OneDrive accounts.

It’s also worth noting that these changes won’t apply to Education tenants as long as they have over 50% education licenses.

You can read Microsoft’s blog post for more information.

In more recent news, OneDrive has been enhanced with Copilot agents that will allow users to consult with AI to find specific files, folders, and other documents.

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