I'm a new admin at a small company and trying to clean up our list of old user accounts. We want to keep important data like emails and OneDrive files from users who have left the company. What's the best approach to achieve this?
6 Answers
We rely on Backupify for our needs. It's not the best, but it gets the job done. I've been considering Keep It too, if anyone has experience with that.
For long-term storage, download everything from the user's OneDrive and convert the email to a shared mailbox. Grant access to the manager, remove all licenses, and you should be good. If it’s just for 30 days, just reset the security info, give the manager access, and delete everything after a month.
Remember to keep track of your timelines according to each user's role! It can help avoid overflow.
It really depends on how long you need to keep the data. In my workplace, we convert mailboxes to shared ones, unlicense them completely, and add an 'X' in front of the usernames for organization. The access is usually given to the manager for a month so they can retrieve anything necessary, and then it's all removed. I'm curious if there are better methods out there, since we tend to accumulate accounts quickly.
Right? It's sad to see all those 'X' names piling up.
You could use backup solutions to save the data, then export it. We’ve been exporting with tools like afi.ai. Rclone can also be used for tenant-to-tenant transfers, but it requires some technical skills and can be slow if Microsoft decides to throttle it.
That's interesting! We've used rclone before, but only for tenant-local exports.
Converting the old mailboxes to shared mailboxes is a solid choice. Also, I recommend giving the supervisor access to the OneDrive files. After that, just remove the licenses. The time frame for fully deleting users can really depend on the role they played in the company, but I think some teams are too hesitant to do it.
Don't forget to remove them from the Global Address List too!