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Removing license from user, what gets removed and how quickly (returing staff member)
Hi, Just after some clarification, hopefully from someone that has gone through the process. Example, a staff member leaves the company and their account has it's O365 license removed as par...
Well, you've got to be able to place a hold on a mailbox before it can become inactive, so that means E3 or better.
It's 30 days according to this and as long as the respective licence is restored within that timeframe, the data should remain intact:
https://support.office.com/en-US/article/Remove-a-former-employee-from-Office-365-44d96212-4d90-4027-9aa9-a95eddb367d1#bkmk_remove
"When you remove the license, all that user's data is held for 30 days. You can access the data, or restore the account if the user comes back. After 30 days, all the user's data (except for documents stored on SharePoint Online) is deleted permanently from Office 365 and can't be recovered."
There are some caveats with Exchange Online scenarios, especially if in a hybrid config (in which case, you'd likely need to use New-MailboxRestoreRequest to recover the mailbox). Here's some additional light reading: https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/exchange/2016/10/31/change-in-behavior-for-delicensed-exchange-online-users/. It probably goes without saying that it'd be a good idea to provision a few test mailboxes and update your SOPs.