Why do I have to do a purchase to keep my MS-account active ?

Question

Hello, I've received this mail from Microsoft. I wondered if this is fake or real. I pay my yearly subscription to MS365, so why do I have to purchase anything extra ?

Regards,

Jan

Complete a purchase by July 5, 2025 to keep your account active

You are receiving this email because your associated Microsoft Entra ID tenant (tenant ID 859ac263-60d5-445b-af51-ce6bbe442c7f) has been inactive for more than 200 days. Required action: To continue using your tenant, make a purchase before July 5, 2025. If you don’t make a purchase before this date, your next purchase with Microsoft will require a new Microsoft Entra ID tenant to continue using Microsoft services.

Answer 1

@Jan Deprez I hope you are doing well

Welcome to Microsoft Q&A

The message saying “Complete a purchase by July 5, 2025…” isn’t about your personal Outlook.com, OneDrive, or Microsoft 365 Family subscription. Instead, it’s about an Azure/Entra ID tenant—most likely one you created a while back for testing or a trial—that hasn’t had any paid activity in over 200 days.

Microsoft sends this reminder to let you know that if you want to keep that business (Entra) tenant active, you’ll need to make any qualifying purchase (like an Azure or Dynamics license) under that tenant before the deadline.

Now, if you’re only using Microsoft services like Outlook, OneDrive, or Office for personal use, you probably don’t need to worry—those don’t rely on an Entra ID tenant like business or enterprise services do. So if you never set up something like Azure AD, Entra ID, or an Azure subscription, you can safely ignore the message.

However, if you did create an Azure or Entra tenant in the past, and you’d like to keep it, you just need to make any small paid purchase within that tenant before July 5. That will keep it active, and your personal Microsoft services won’t be affected either way.

If my answer helped you resolve your issue, please consider marking it as the correct answer. This helps others in the community find solutions more easily. Thanks!

Answer 2

Hello @Jan Deprez

The email you received from Microsoft indicates that your Microsoft Entra ID tenant has been inactive for over 200 days. This is a reminder to take action regarding your tenant's inactivity.

To avoid any service disruptions, it's recommended that you make a purchase or renew your existing subscriptions before the deadline of July 5th, 2025. This will ensure that your tenant remains active.

For clarification regarding the Entra ID tenant, a Microsoft Entra tenant provides identity and access management (IAM) capabilities for the applications and resources used by your organization. An identity represents a directory object that can be authenticated and authorized to access resources. These identity objects include human identities (such as students and teachers) as well as non-human identities like classroom and student devices, applications, and service principals.

The Microsoft Entra tenant serves as an identity security boundary under the control of your organization’s IT department. Within this boundary, the administration of objects (such as user objects) and the configuration of tenant-wide settings are managed by your IT administrators.

If you're already using services like Microsoft 365, Office 365, Azure, or Dynamics CRM Online, your tenant is automatically a Microsoft Entra tenant. You can start managing access to your integrated cloud apps right away. For additional information refer these documents:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/entra/fundamentals/whatis https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/education/deploy/intro-azure-active-directory#what-is-a-microsoft-entra-tenant

Refer Similar Q&A Post: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/2118130/action-required-make-a-purchase-by-december-19-202

Please note that this email does not affect your data or accounts.

I hope this clarifies things.