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Microsoft Entra Blog
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Action required: MSOnline and AzureAD PowerShell retirement - 2025 info and resources

krbash's avatar
krbash
Icon for Microsoft rankMicrosoft
Jan 13, 2025

Retirement of MSOnline PowerShell begins in April 2025. Learn about the timeline and required actions.

As announced in Microsoft Entra change announcements and prior blog updates, the MSOnline and Microsoft AzureAD PowerShell modules were deprecated on March 30, 2024. The retirement for MSOnline PowerShell module starts in early April 2025 and ends in late May 2025. You must take action to avoid impact after this date by migrating any use of MSOnline to Microsoft Graph PowerShell SDK or Microsoft Entra PowerShell, which is currently in preview.

Key points 

  • MSOnline PowerShell will retire (and stop working) between early April 2025 and late May 2025.
  • AzureAD PowerShell will no longer be supported after March 30, 2025, but its retirement will happen after July 1, 2025. This postponement is to allow you time to finish MSOnline PowerShell migration.
  • To ensure customer readiness for MSOnline PowerShell retirement, a series of temporary outage tests will occur for all tenants between January and March 2025

You should plan to migrate use of MSOnline to Microsoft Graph PowerShell or Microsoft Entra PowerShell as soon as possible. Migration from AzureAD PowerShell can be prioritized after you have completed migration from MSOnline PowerShell.

Timeline summary

Module 

End of support 

Temporary outage tests

Retirement

MSOnline 

March 30, 2025 

Between January 20, 2025 and March 30, 2025

Early Apr 2025 to late May 2025  

AzureAD  

March 30, 2025 

N/A

After July 1, 2025 

 

MSOnline PowerShell

As part of our ongoing commitment to your security, the retirement of MSOnline PowerShell is prioritized and will happen between early April 2025 and late May 2025. MSOnline PowerShell will stop working when it is retired.

To ensure that customers are ready for this retirement of MSOnline PowerShell, we’ll be deploying a series of temporary outages from January through March 2025. During these temporary outages, use of MSOnline cmdlets will fail with a message indicating that MS Online PowerShell is disallowed. The projected timeline for these temporary outages is:

  • Between January 20, 2025 and February 28, 2025, tenants will experience at least two (2) temporary outages for MSOnline PowerShell each between 3 to 8 hours in duration and at different times of day.
  • During March 2025, all tenants will experience a temporary out of longer duration for final preparation for retirement of MSOnline PowerShell starting in April 2025.

After each of these temporary outages, functionality will be restored to allow you to continue migration of MSOnline PowerShell usage.

AzureAD PowerShell 

The deprecation notice period for AzureAD PowerShell ends on March 30, 2025. After this date, it will have no further maintenance or support commitments. To allow customers to focus on migration from MSOnline, we are targeting the third quarter of 2025 for its retirement.

Staying informed

We'll continue to update this blog post regularly as we move through 2025 to keep you up to date on the latest in these retirements. Where possible, we'll notify customers of expected impact through the Microsoft 365 Message Center and notifications in the Microsoft Entra admin center.

Identifying use of MSOnline and AzureAD PowerShell modules in your tenant 

Sign-in logs 
Microsoft Entra sign-in logs can be used to identify logins from MSOnline and AzureAD PowerShell. These log events provide information about the client and user for the PowerShell session. To use them:  

  • Navigate to the Microsoft Entra Admin Center
  • Expand Identity and click Show more.
  • Under Monitoring & Health, select Sign-in logs.
  • Select the User sign-ins (non-interactive) tab, then click Add filters to launch the Pick a field object picker.
    • Select Application and click Apply.
    • In the Application prompt, enter Azure Active Directory PowerShell and click Apply.
  • Repeat these steps for user sign-ins (interactive) logs 

Both MSOnline PowerShell and AzureAD PowerShell sign-in events appear with the Application Name Azure Active Directory PowerShell.  

Entra recommendations

For AzureAD PowerShell, additional information about usage can be found in the Migrate Service Principals from the retiring Azure AD Graph APIs to Microsoft Graph recommendation in the Microsoft Entra Recommendations experience. You can access this recommendation in the Microsoft Entra admin center by browsing to: Identity > Overview > Recommendations 

 

Kristopher Bash 

Product Manager, Microsoft Graph 
LinkedIn 

 

 

Read more on this topic

 

Learn more about Microsoft Entra

Prevent identity attacks, ensure least privilege access, unify access controls, and improve the experience for users with comprehensive identity and network access solutions across on-premises and clouds.

Updated Jan 14, 2025
Version 3.0
  • Tato's avatar
    Tato
    Copper Contributor

    WTH? MS removed Exchange support from Graph back in what? 2021? And now you remove MSOnline - is Microsoft really in control on what is happening throughout their mgmt landscape?

  • Dzmitry82's avatar
    Dzmitry82
    Copper Contributor

    not clear, how to manage membership of mail-enabled security and distribution groups after May 2025?

    • RSM_Ryanph's avatar
      RSM_Ryanph
      Copper Contributor

      Agreed, there is NOT alignment between the older and newer commands and seems like many could lose vital capabilities when being forced to move into the new Modules. I do think the new modules are cleaner, faster and get the job done BUT there are still some modules that do NOT have alignment and seems like those "capabilities" will be lost. I HOPE BEFORE this happens, that the MgGraph modules can do everything the older modules can do, otherwise this is going to be a very rough road!

      • SteveMutungi's avatar
        SteveMutungi
        Icon for Microsoft rankMicrosoft

        RSM_Ryanph : Could you share which capabilities might be missing? I’d love to help address any gaps.

        We built a compatibility layer for the Azure AD module to support aliasing. Could you try it and let me know if it works for you?

  • MatBergJbl's avatar
    MatBergJbl
    Brass Contributor

    "Microsoft Entra PowerShell cmdlets are currently in preview and might change. We recommend using these cmdlets for testing and development purposes only, and not in production applications at this time."

    Why is Microsoft not waiting with phasing out the old modules until the new ones have reached production stage? Why are customers forced on beta versions that Microsoft itself recommends to be used only for testing?

    • SteveMutungi's avatar
      SteveMutungi
      Icon for Microsoft rankMicrosoft

      MatBergJbl : Microsoft Entra PowerShell is now GA. Let me know if you’re able to migrate and if you need any support—I’d be happy to help!

  • Fish_Tacos's avatar
    Fish_Tacos
    Brass Contributor

    I appreciate what you’re doing. Could you add a prominent banner when using Connect-MsolService? This would help spread the information and direct users back to your blog post. Exchange Module Does this for connect-exchange. Additionally, some tips on migrating scripts to Microsoft Graph would be very helpful.