Forum Discussion
OneDrive site locked NoAccess for 1 month - Ticket #2605040040008376 - No resolution
I have an open Microsoft support ticket for over 1 month with no
resolution. Hoping the community or a Microsoft engineer can help.
SITUATION:
A departed user (deleted over a year ago) had a OneDrive site that
was accessible to other users until recently. Since then the site
is completely inaccessible to everyone including admins.
Current Status: Active
LockState: NoAccess
WHAT WE TRIED:
- Set-SPOSite -LockState Unlock → command succeeds but site stays blocked
- Set-SPOUser -IsSiteCollectionAdmin $true → fails with "Access to this
Web site has been blocked"
- User does not exist in Entra ID, Deleted Users, or Deleted Sites
ROOT CAUSE IDENTIFIED:
Site was under a 5-year retention policy in Microsoft Purview.
Policy showed error "SiteInReadonlyOrNotAccessible" for this OneDrive.
We removed the OneDrive from the policy exceptions but the site
remains locked.
This appears to be a deadlock:
- Site is locked so retention policy cannot detach
- Retention policy prevents site from being unlocked
No eDiscovery holds found on the site.
Microsoft support has been unable to resolve this for 1 month.
Does anyone know how to break this deadlock?
2 Replies
Hi Ikadirozcan,
Thank you so much for taking the time to review our case and share your insights, it is greatly appreciated.
You are absolutely right in your assessment. Here is the current state based on your questions:
Get-SPOSite currently reports:
- LockState: NoAccess (despite Set-SPOSite -LockState Unlock completing without errors)
- Status: Active
Regarding the retention policy propagation, we removed the site from the Default 5-year retention policy at the beginning (one month ago), so propagation should have had sufficient time to complete by now. However the LockState remains unchanged.
This confirms exactly what you described, the unlock command succeeds but nothing actually changes, strongly suggesting there is still a compliance or retention related process holding the site at the backend level that is not visible or accessible from the admin side.
Regarding escalation to the SharePoint Online engineering team this is precisely what we have been requesting for over a month through our support ticket. The support team keeps confirming escalation, asking what seem to be like generic information gathering rather than focused technical troubleshooting; but we have not seen any backend engineering action yet.
We completely agree this does not appear to be a standard administrative lock and requires Microsoft engineering intervention.
If anyone in the community has encountered a similar retention policy deadlock scenario and found a resolution, we would be very grateful to hear about it.
Thank you again for your help!
Hi nardila,
This sounds like it may be stuck somewhere on the Microsoft side rather than being a normal SharePoint admin issue.
What stands out to me is that Set-SPOSite -LockState Unlock completes successfully, but the site remains in a "No Access" state. If the command succeeds but nothing actually changes, I'd suspect there's still some compliance or retention-related process holding the site.
I'd be interested to know what Get-SPOSite currently reports for the lock state and whether the retention policy exclusion has had enough time to fully propagate.
Given that you've already been working with support for over a month, I would ask whether the case has been escalated to the SharePoint Online engineering team. This doesn't sound like a standard administrative lock.
Hopefully someone who's dealt with a similar retention-policy scenario can chime in.
Good luck.
