Microsoft plans to begin archiving unlicensed OneDrive user accounts after 90 days, on January 27, 2025, with a payment required for garage and account reactivation.
There are other reasons why businesses may have unlicensed OneDrive accounts, Microsoft said in a blog post on the SharePoint admin site; if a license was removed when a worker leaves an organization but the OneDrive account remains, for example, or if an account was created without a license.
These unlicensed accounts can pose security and compliance issues, Microsoft said, and lead to duplicate records.
With its upcoming OneDrive policy update, Microsoft will begin moving unlicensed accounts to Microsoft 365 Archive after 90 days. At this point, the OneDrive account will be inaccessible to IT administrators and users.
According to a post in the Microsoft 36five admin center, discovered through Petri, consumers will be charged five cents per month per gig for purchasing accounts on Microsoft 36five archives; When reactivating the account, 60 cents per gigathroughte will be charged.
Microsoft has also introduced guidance for managing unlicensed accounts.
First, administrators can run a report through the SharePoint admin center to identify those accounts within their organization. These reports, which demonstrate data such as username, email address, account type, and date of last account activity, will be widely used. It will be available starting this Friday, August 16.
Once unlicensed accounts are located, they can be deleted, assigned a new license (which requires a subscription to Microsoft 365 or Office 365 and OneDrive for the user), or saved to the Microsoft 365 archive.
Matthew Finnegan covers Microsoft, collaboration and productivity software, AR/VR, and other enterprise IT topics. He joined IDG in January 2013 and is based in Sweden.