Sharepoint Online storage limit decreasing when license is removed

Brass Contributor

Hey Guys,

can someone tell me what happens when e.g. I have 100 licenses in my tenant and currently a sharepoint online storage limit of 2TB and I remove these licenses?

Do I loose 1TB of storage limit and my data if my data is also at 2TB stored?

If the limit persists, can it be used to simply add 1000 licenses to a tenant, increase the sharepoint storage limit and then remove 900 licenses again and keep the higher limit?

Thanks and regards!

10 Replies

That's not going to work...if you remove the license for sure you are not going to have the storage you had no matter if you are storing documents there or not

@Pontus SjälanderI read through thhis article but I can't find a clear statement that I loose storage when I remove licenses. In general there is not a single statement in the internet which says so.

For example when I create a new Tenant and add 100 Teams Exploratory licenses to it, sharepoint storage will be upgraded by 1TB (100x10GB) and if I won't remove the licenses even after their expiration date, currently I think the tenant will stay at 2TB sharepoint storage.

Unfortunately I have no chance to test this atm..

Regards

Just out of curiousity, do you know this from your experience or just logic thinking?
I can't imageine that MS removes 1TB of sharepoint storage with highly confidential documents stored just for fun after I remove 100 licenses similar the reason why I need to remove these even if it is only for a few days or a few months.

@Julian12
I've seen several tenants shift in the amount of data available depending on the licenses present in the specific tenant.
However,  i'm not certain about the in-grace period before the data storage available will decrease,especially when the storage is used.
If I were you, I would create a support ticket in the specific tenant to get an official answer from MIcrosoft

@Pontus SjälanderI also think this is the best idea, I just created a support ticket and keep this thread updated if there are any new infos for this issue.

@Julian12 have you received an official statement?

@Timo
Yes, sry, for late response, totally forgot this thread.
A MS supporter told me that there is a grace period of 30 days after removal of a sharepoitn storage relevant license for saving files for admins and another 30 days in which MS support can recover files. After 60 days files will be deleted which over consume the storage but I can not sy in which order.
Regards

@Julian12 no problem :) I was just curious what you learned.
Did they also explain what happens to the SharePoint Online storage available? To my knowledge, although users are in "grace period" and continue to have access to their services, the extra SharePoint storage received through e.g. Office 365 E1 user-licenses, might get reduced. Have you any experience with that?

I'm not sure what you mean exactly?
As long as you have licenses which provide sharepoint storage, you are safe, only as soon as you have more storage consumed than licenses availabe, your total storage limit will be reduced after 60 days, similar which data is stored there. I can not say which files will be deleted first or not, forgot to ask that unfortunately.