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Microsoft 365 Backup Blog
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Microsoft 365 Backup and Microsoft 365 Backup Storage at Ignite 2023

Zach_Rosenfield's avatar
Zach_Rosenfield
Icon for Microsoft rankMicrosoft
Nov 15, 2023
  You have critical data stored in Microsoft 365 which means business continuity is more essential than ever in this era of rising ransomware attacks and security threats. Recovering large volu...
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Updated Apr 17, 2025
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JohnHQI's avatar
JohnHQI
Brass Contributor
Nov 29, 2023

I'm specifically looking to use Microsoft 365 Backup for retaining backups of former team members' OneDrive site and Exchange mailboxes. I noticed two major limitations:

 

  • While OneDrive account and mailbox backups of deleted users are maintained and after the user’s Microsoft Entra ID is deleted are restorable, search in the people picker UI for that user won't work. The user is displayed as an empty user in results, requiring a guess-and-check methodology.

  • Deleting the user account (for example, deleting the Microsoft Entra ID user) that owns the OneDrive account or Exchange mailbox renders the OneDrive account and Exchange mailbox as inactive or orphaned. The end-to-end workflow to restore such sites or mailboxes isn't supported directly in the Microsoft 365 Backup product. The Microsoft 365 Backup product ensures retention of the content.

 

Will Microsoft 365 Backup provide an easy way to access backups from deleted users when it reaches GA?