Onedrive files - user without licens

Question

Hi,

When I remove an E3/E5 license from a user data from SharePoint Online/Onedrive is not deleted.

When you remove the license, all that user's data is held for 30 days. You can access the data, or restore the account if the user comes back. After 30 days, all the user's data (except for documents stored on SharePoint Online) is permanently deleted from Microsoft 365 and can't be recovered.

I believe I have lots of data in Onedrive from users who are still in Entra ID - users who had an licens but no longer has an licens. I would like to delete all onedrive data from these users. How to do that is an easy way?

Answer 1

Hi @Torben Andersen

You can permanently delete the OneDrive by running the following commands:

Remove-SPOSite -Identity <URL>

Remove-SPODeletedSite -Identity <URL>

To run the commands, please download the latest SharePoint Online Management Shell, and connect to SharePoint as a SharePoint Administrator in Microsoft 365.

For more, please refer to: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/restore-deleted-onedrive

Please note, when you permanently delete a OneDrive, you will not be able to restore it.

---

If the answer is helpful, please click "Accept Answer" and kindly upvote it. If you have extra questions about this answer, please click "Comment".

Note: Please follow the steps in our documentation to enable e-mail notifications if you want to receive the related email notification for this thread.

---

Answer 2

Hi @Jiajing Hua-MFST

Thanks a lot for your answer

How can I get the URL for all the users who don't have a license?

Answer 3

Hi @Torben Andersen

Thanks for your back.

Based on my tests, to get the unlicensed OneDrive account URLs, you can use PnP PowerShell (Get-PnPUserProfileProperty) via specifying user's email accounts in .csv file.

The following image is the .csv file of my sample. You may list user accounts that be removed licenses in a .csv file.

Then run the code like below as a SharePoint admin. Please note, you need to replace "domain" with yours.

#Parameters
$SiteURL = "https://domain-admin.sharepoint.com"
$CSVFile = "C:\Users\test2\Desktop\UserAccount.csv"
#Connect to PnP Online
Connect-PnPOnline -Url $SiteURL -Interactive
#Get the data from CSV file
$CSVData = Import-CSV $CSVFile
$Counter =1
#Loop through each Row in the CSV file and upload file to SharePoint
ForEach($Row in $CSVData)
{
    Get-PnPUserProfileProperty -Account $Row.useraccount -Properties 'PersonalUrl'
    $Counter++
}

Then you will get the URLs like following image.

For more, please refer to this link: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/list-onedrive-urls

You can also export reports via going to SharePoint Admin Center. Click Reports > OneDrive accounts, go to Unlicensed OneDrive accounts section, then click "Download report". Please note, the accounts listed in this report are updated weekly, have been unlicensed for more than 90 days.

The reference: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/unlicensed-onedrive-accounts

---

If the answer is helpful, please click "Accept Answer" and kindly upvote it. If you have extra questions about this answer, please click "Comment".

Note: Please follow the steps in our documentation to enable e-mail notifications if you want to receive the related email notification for this thread.

---

Answer 4

Hi @Jiajing Hua-MFST

Thanks a lot for your input, sorry for my late respons.

I will test your solution and give you respons with a week or two.

Answer 5

Hi @Jiajing Hua-MFST

I get this error message