Forum Discussion
Unable to reconcile storage used according to tenant wide allotted space to what we actually use
One of the reasons your storage calculations does not match with what you see from the SharePoint center is because of this:
When you buy licenses (add-ons) for a user and assign it, a certain GB is added to ur SharePoint storage by default and your storage will keep increasing in the admin center, but there is a problem when a license expires or is removed from a user account, that amount of storage is almost meant to be removed from the admin center, so the admin center remains the same amount but internally it will be decreased because a license has been deallocated or expired.
So when the internal clock senses the tenant storage is filled it notifies the admin.
To get an accurate report on your storage, you will need to extract all your tenant licenses and add-ons, currently active, and do the math. This will give you accurate data.
please note that the report you get via excel from the admin center is always accurate but the display on the admin center for the tenant storage might not be accurate as it doesn't synchronize always.
To be perfectly sure, you can open a support ticket with Microsoft and they will get you the exact tenant storage and the breakdown you can also ask how you can calculate your tenant storage based on your licenses and add-ons.
I hope this is helpful.
Thanks.
My issue is not with what storage we OWN or are allocated to use as a max. My issue is what we are USING.
Okay, Green,
I had to go back and read the last paragraph of your query, you will like to know the sites that use the biggest amount of storage.
This is what I will suggest,
Navigate to the SharePoint admin center (Modern Experience) and filter it with the largest sites and that should display the page in top-down of sites with the highest usage, after doing this you can visit the site itself to pick well-detailed storage metrics once you a site collection admin on the site.
As for the support request with Microsoft, I will advise you to write back to them.
Thanks- I am facing a similar issue. I recently deleted 1.7TB data from a SPO site, the site was taken out of retention, files deleted from the Doc Libraries, 1st stage bin, 2nd stage bin and then the site put back into retention, the 1.7TB has never appeared as available storage, in an ongoing battle with MS regarding this but is costing as we have to purchase more storage until they look at this properly.
The reason the storage hasnt reflected on your tenant is because the files are not completed deleted from your tenant. You confirmed the site has retention policy applied to it, so it means that there is a preservation hold library on that site only the site admin can see under site contents. This library holds deleted data (deleted from 1st and 2nd stage recycle bins). You will need to remove the site again from the policy and access the library and purge out the files.
This library can be accessed via Site contents or reconstructing this URL. https://<your-domain>.sharepoint.com/sites/<your-site>/PreservationHoldLibrary/Forms/AllItems.aspx
Also, below accessing this location, you can confirm the existence of this library by going to storage metrics on the site.
