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What Happens to Exchange Online Archives When Removing Plan 2 License
Question details
The user wants to know the impact on Exchange Online archives if they remove an Exchange Online Plan 2 license, and whether OneDrive for Business storage can be expanded beyond 5 TB up to 20 TB.
- Product
- Microsoft Exchange Online, OneDrive for Business
- Device & OS
- not provided
- Scenario
- Managing Microsoft 365 business licenses, archive capabilities, and cloud storage limitations.
- Observed behavior
- The user is looking for clarification on archive data retention upon license downgrades and the rules around purchasing additional OneDrive storage.
Before removing any Microsoft 365 licenses, verify your current archive size in the Exchange admin center and ensure that you have exported or backed up any critical emails to avoid accidental data loss during a downgrade.
Review Archive Data Limits Before Downgrading Licenses
Understand how downgrading from Exchange Online Plan 2 affects your archive capacity so you can prevent potential data loss.
Exchange Online Plan 2 includes an auto-expanding archive feature that can provide up to 1.5 TB of storage. When you remove this license or downgrade to Plan 1, the archive limit drops significantly (typically to 50 GB). If your current archive exceeds the new limit, you may lose access to the older data, or the mailbox could be restricted.
Log in to the Exchange admin center, navigate to 'Recipients' > 'Mailboxes', select the affected user, and check the 'Mailbox usage' and 'Archive' status to see how much data is currently stored.
If the archive size exceeds the 50 GB limit of lower-tier plans, use Microsoft Outlook to export older emails to a local .pst file before removing the Plan 2 license.
Once the data is secured, go to the Microsoft 365 admin center, navigate to 'Users' > 'Active users', select the user, go to the 'Licenses and apps' tab, and uncheck the Exchange Online Plan 2 license.
Increasing OneDrive for Business Storage Beyond 5 TB
Learn the specific conditions required to increase your OneDrive for Business storage up to 20 TB or 25 TB.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Does removing an Exchange Online Plan 2 license delete the mailbox immediately?
No. When you remove the license, the mailbox is disconnected but the data is retained for 30 days. If no other Exchange license is applied within that window, the mailbox and its archive will be permanently deleted.
Can I keep my auto-expanding archive if I downgrade to Exchange Online Plan 1?
Exchange Online Plan 1 only provides a 50 GB archive limit natively. To utilize auto-expanding archives (up to 1.5 TB), you must either keep Exchange Online Plan 2 or purchase an additional Exchange Online Archiving add-on for the Plan 1 user.
Can I simply buy an extra 15 TB to add to my 5 TB OneDrive Business account?
No, Microsoft does not sell raw OneDrive storage in flexible increments like this for Enterprise plans. You must meet the 90% usage requirement on your 5 TB allocation and then request an increase through Microsoft Support, provided you have a qualifying subscription with 5 or more users.
