I'm trying to understand how Microsoft's retention policies work with Exchange and OneDrive when I unlicense user accounts. If I have a policy in place that preserves all Exchange mailboxes and OneDrive accounts forever, what happens to the data if I completely unlicense those user accounts? My goal is to save on licensing costs during a litigation hold while ensuring that the data is still retained. Would I be able to re-license the accounts later to access the data, or does unlicensing affect this? Any guidance or resources to clarify this would be greatly appreciated! Thanks in advance!
1 Answer
For Exchange, you can't just unlicense the accounts and expect the retention policy to keep the mailboxes as is. Instead, you'll need to create "Inactive mailboxes". Check out the Microsoft guide for all the details here: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/purview/create-and-manage-inactive-mailboxes?view=o365-worldwide. Another option is to convert the mailbox to a shared mailbox, but remember that there are storage limits with that method.
As for OneDrive, the situation is different. If you unlicense it, the data can either get archived or removed, based on its retention status. You can see more about that here: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/unlicensed-onedrive-accounts.
Thanks for the clarification! I’ve noticed that there’s a lot of focus on deleting the mailbox to achieve that "inactive" state. Since we plan to keep the accounts and just unlicense them, is that the only way to get to an inactive status, or are there alternatives?