IT Administration

When an employee leaves your organization or a Microsoft 365 account is no longer required, deleting the account might seem straightforward. However, there are a few important things to consider before clicking Delete user. The user’s email, OneDrive files, licenses, and other organizational data may need to be preserved or reassigned first. In this guide, I’ll walk you through how to safely delete a user from the Microsoft 365 Admin Center and explain what you should check before completing the deletion.   What You Should Do Before Deleting a Microsoft 365 User Before deleting the account, determine what needs to happen to the user’s: Email OneDrive files Microsoft 365 license Microsoft specifically recommends considering what you want to do with the user’s email and OneDrive content and whether you want to keep the license or stop paying for it. [learn.microsoft.com] This is especially important when you’re removing an employee who has left your organization. For a full employee offboarding process, Microsoft recommends additional measures such as preventing the former employee from signing in, preserving their mailbox where necessary, handling organizational data on mobile devices, forwarding their email or converting the mailbox, providing access to OneDrive/Outlook data, and then addressing licensing and account deletion. How to Delete a User in Microsoft 365 Admin Center Let’s go through the process step by step. Step 1: Open the Microsoft 365 Admin Center Sign in to your organization’s Microsoft 365 Admin Center using an account with the appropriate administrative permissions   Step 2: Go to Active Users From the Microsoft 365 Admin Center: Select Users from the navigation menu. Select Active users. You should now see the active user accounts within your organization.   Step 3: Select the User You Want to Delete Find the user account that you want to remove. Select the user to open the account details. Before proceeding further, double-check that you’ve selected the correct account.   Step 4: Decide What to Do With the User’s Data and License This is one of the most important parts of the process. On the Delete user page, review the available options for the user’s license, email, and OneDrive data. Don’t rush through these options, particularly when you’re deleting the account of a former employee. Preserve Important OneDrive Files If the user stored organizational files in OneDrive, make sure you preserve any files the business still needs. Important files can be moved to another appropriate location or access can be given to another user. Take care of important OneDrive data as part of the offboarding process rather than assuming that deleting the user immediately deletes everything associated with the account. Preserve Important Email If you need to retain the user’s email, deal with the mailbox before completing the account deletion. If the account has already been deleted and is still within the recovery period, you may be able to restore the account first and then handle the email data appropriately. Consider the User’s License Think about whether the license needs to be reassigned or removed. If the license is no longer required by this user, it may be available to assign to another user. Also remember that removing a license assignment from a user and reducing the total number of licenses you’re paying for are not necessarily the same thing. If your goal is to reduce subscription costs, review your subscription and billing settings as well.   Step 5: Delete the User Once you’ve reviewed the account and made the appropriate decisions about the user’s data, complete the deletion by selecting Delete user.   What Happens After You Delete a Microsoft 365 User? Deleting the account does not necessarily mean everything disappears instantly. A deleted Microsoft 365 user account can generally be restored for 30 days before the user’s data is permanently deleted. [learn.microsoft.com] This recovery window can be helpful if an account is deleted accidentally. However, you shouldn’t treat that recovery period as a replacement for properly backing up or transferring important organizational data beforehand.   What Happens to the User’s OneDrive Files? If the user has important organizational files stored in OneDrive, move or preserve the files you want to keep. The default OneDrive retention period for a deleted user’s OneDrive is 30 days. After that retention period, the deleted user’s OneDrive is moved to the site collection recycle bin, where it is retained for 93 days. [learn.microsoft.com] Because OneDrive retention settings can be configured, check the retention settings that apply to your organization instead of relying only on the default. Important: Deleting a User Is Not the Same as Offboarding an Employee If the account belongs to an employee leaving the company, simply deleting the user should not necessarily be your entire offboarding procedure. A proper offboarding process may include: Preventing the former employee from signing in Saving mailbox content when required Handling organizational data on the employee’s mobile device where applicable Forwarding email or converting the mailbox to a shared mailbox when appropriate Giving another employee access to relevant OneDrive and Outlook data Handling the former employee’s Microsoft 365 license Deleting the former employee’s user account [learn.microsoft.com] Following an established offboarding procedure can therefore involve considerably more than simply deleting the account.   Important Note About Shared Mailboxes and Email Forwarding Be particularly careful if you’ve already converted the user’s mailbox to a shared mailbox or configured email forwarding. If you’ve converted the account to a shared mailbox or configured email forwarding, don’t simply delete the account. These functions can still depend on the account, and deleting it may interfere with the setup. [learn.microsoft.com] This is an important distinction if the departing employee’s email address needs to remain active for customers, suppliers, or other contacts. What If Your Organization Uses On-Premises Active Directory? There’s an important exception for organizations with synchronized identities. If your organization synchronizes user accounts to Microsoft 365 from an on-premises Active Directory environment, you need to manage deletion and restoration of those synchronized accounts from the local Active Directory environment rather than directly from