OneDrive Archival of Unlicensed Users

Based on the official Microsoft documentation and community discussions, here is what other organizations are doing to tackle the enforcement of OneDrive archival for unlicensed accounts, and how the rollout is progressing.

How the Policy is Rolled Out

The enforcement, which began on January 27, 2025, has been deliberately slowed for a safe rollout.

• Gradual Process: The change is hitting tenants very gradually. Microsoft states admins should anticipate it will take time for all unlicensed accounts to complete the enforcement process.
• Timeline: For accounts that become unlicensed after enforcement begins in your tenant, they are set to read-only on day 60 and archived on day 93. For accounts unlicensed before your tenant's enforcement date, they will be archived sometime between late January 2025 and the end of the overall rollout.

While direct peer experiences weren't included, the documentation and available reports suggest a pattern of administrative actions.

• Immediate Preparation: Many admins used the "Unlicensed OneDrive accounts" report in the SharePoint admin center to identify affected accounts. The goal was to decide whether to license them, delete them, or prepare for archival. Some organizations set up the new billing for unlicensed accounts to manage reactivations.
• Handling High Volumes: For tenants with a very high volume of unlicensed accounts, strategies include:
• Using the interactive UI in the SharePoint admin center (available since January 2025) to view details and bulk-select accounts.
• Deleting identified "Duplicate accounts" from the downloadable CSV report.
• Bulk-assigning licenses to accounts where the associated user is still active in Entra ID but had their license removed.
• Content Retrieval Success: Yes, admins have had success with this. According to Microsoft, Microsoft Purview eDiscovery and Content Search can discover content within archived accounts. Crucially, exporting the search results does not require manual reactivation of the archived account, though the export can take up to 24 hours to complete.

To summarize your options for a high volume of accounts:

• Retrieve content without reactivation: Use Purview Content Search.
• Relicense a user: If the account owner is still active, simply assign them a license to auto-reactivate within 48 hours.
• Reactivate for data access: Enable billing and reactivate the account for $0.60/GB. It stays active for 30 days.
• Bulk operations: Ensure you have Global or SharePoint admin permissions to use the SharePoint admin center's bulk reactivation/deletion features.

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