What happens to my data and access when my Microsoft 365 for business subscription ends?

When your subscription ends, your access to Microsoft 365 products and services, apps, and customer data go through multiple statuses before the subscription is fully turned off, or deleted. Being aware of this status progression can help you return your subscription to an active status before it's too late. If you're leaving Microsoft 365, we recommend that you back up your data before it gets deleted.

This article applies to all Microsoft 365 for business subscriptions, including Enterprise and Volume Licensing.

Understand subscription lifecycle statuses

When your subscription ends, it goes through multiple lifecycle statuses before it gets deleted. This gives you, as the admin, time to reactivate the subscription if you want to continue the service, or to back up your customer data if you decide you no longer want the subscription.

A subscription goes through the following statuses over the course of its lifecycle:

Active > Expired > Disabled > Deleted

The Expired status starts immediately after the subscription reaches its end date, regardless of whether it expired naturally by reaching the end of the subscription term, you turned off recurring billing, canceled, or upgraded it.

The subscription only enters the Expired status after all the licenses are removed. If you order fewer than the original number of licenses, the subscription doesn’t enter the Expired status. Instead, admins have 90 days to resolve the conflict for any assigned licenses in excess of the purchased quantity. During this 90 day period there’s no service interruption to subscriptions that are assigned on a per user basis. For nonuser based subscriptions, like Office 365 Extra File Storage for SharePoint, a reduction in the license quantity immediately results in reduced storage. For Enterprise volume licensing customers, we recommend placing an Online Reservation to restore service, and then contact your licensing partner to understand why there was a reduction in licenses.

For yearly or three-year subscriptions, if you turn off recurring billing, it goes through all the lifecycle statuses. The Expired status starts on the subscription end date, not the date that you turned off recurring billing.

For monthly subscriptions, if you cancel a monthly subscription within the cancellation policy window, it skips the Expired status and immediately moves to the Disabled status on the date you cancel it. This means that your users immediately lose access to the Microsoft 365 assets, and only admins have access to the data during the Disabled state.

The number of days a subscription stays in each lifecycle status is different, depending on whether you bought the subscription directly from Microsoft, or through an Enterprise agreement, a Cloud Solution Provider (CSP), or Volume Licensing (VL). For more information, see Lengths of time a subscription spends in each lifecycle status, later in this article. The following table explains what you can expect for each lifecycle status when a paid Microsoft 365 for business subscription ends.

*For most offers, in most countries/regions.

Lengths of time a subscription spends in each lifecycle status

For most offers, in most countries and regions, the number of days a subscription stays in each lifecycle status is shown in the following table.

Lifecycle status durations for Enterprise customers

If you’re an Enterprise customer, the lifecycle statuses and time periods for each are different, based on the length of your subscription. The following table lists the statuses and number of days for each status and each subscription length.

Lifecycle status durations for volume licensing customers

If you bought your subscription through an Enterprise volume licensing agreement or through the Open Value licensing program, the following table lists the statuses and number of days.

Lifecycle status durations for Cloud Service Provider (CSP) customers

If you bought your subscription through a CSP, see Subscription lifecycle states - Partner Center for descriptions of the lifecycle statuses that apply to those subscriptions.

Understand your options if your subscription is about to expire

While a subscription is active, you and your users have normal access to your data, services like email, OneDrive, and Microsoft 365 apps. As the admin, you receive a series of notifications via email and in the admin center as your subscription nears its expiration date.

If you’re a Volume Licensing customer, see Options if your volume licensing subscription is about to expire.

Before the subscription reaches its expiration date, you have two options:

1. Enable recurring billing for the subscription.
   • If Recurring billing is already turned on, you don't have to take any action. Your subscription is automatically billed, and you're charged for another year or month, depending on your current billing frequency.
   • If you turned off Recurring billing, you can turn it back on on to keep your subscription active
   • If you bought Microsoft 365 Apps for business with a prepaid card, you can turn on Recurring billing for your subscription and provide a payment method to continue the subscription.
   • If you have Microsoft 365 Apps for business, see Manage recurring billing for your subscription.
2. Let the subscription expire.
   • If you don't want to continue your subscription, turn off recurring billing. Your subscription ends on its expiration date, and you can ignore all related email notifications.
   • If you're a Microsoft 365 Business Standard customer, and you prepaid for your subscription and activated it with a product key, you can let your subscription expire by taking no action.

Lifecycle information for volume licensing customers

This section contains information specifically for customers who bought online services either through the Open Volume Licensing program or through a volume licensing program, like Enterprise, Select Plus, or Microsoft Products & Services Agreement (MPSA).

For all VL subscriptions, the Expired status starts immediately after the subscription reaches its end date, or the number of licenses is reduced. Services immediately become unavailable when the Expired status starts and lasts for 90 days. The exact end date depends on how you bought your subscription.

• For subscriptions bought through the VL program, the end date depends on the date you placed the order.
• For Open Value customers, the end date depends on the date you activated your product keys.

Options if your volume licensing subscription is about to expire

1. Enable recurring billing for the subscription.
   • If your online services were bought through the Open Volume Licensing program, see Microsoft Open License program changes for your options to renew existing subscriptions or buy new products and services.
   • If you bought your subscription through a Volume Licensing program, contact your Microsoft volume licensing partner about placing a renewal order.
2. Let the subscription expire.
   • If you're an Open Volume Licensing customer working with a partner, you can let your subscription expire by taking no action.
   • If you bought your subscription through a volume licensing program, contact your Microsoft volume licensing partner to ensure there's no automatic extension in place for your agreement.

What happens when you cancel a subscription

If you cancel your subscription within the cancellation policy window, the subscription skips the Expired status and moves directly to the Disabled status.

We recommend that you back up your data before you cancel your subscription. As an admin, you can still access and back up data for your organization while it’s in the Disabled status. Any customer data that you leave behind might be deleted after 90 days and will be deleted no later than 180 days after cancellation.

If you're a partner who's an admin on behalf of (AOBO) a customer, and you canceled a subscription, it can take up to 90 days for the admin center to reflect the status change.

To learn how to cancel, see Cancel your subscription in the Microsoft 365 admin center. If you want your subscription data to be deleted before the typical Disabled status is over, you can close your account.

What happens when your trial ends

When your trial ends, we automatically start billing you for your subscription. Before your trial ends, you can take one of the following actions:

• Extend your trial. If you need more time to evaluate Microsoft 365, you can extend your trial.
• Cancel the trial or let it expire. If you decide not to buy Microsoft 365, you can turn off recurring billing and let your trial expire or cancel it. Before your trial ends, back up any data that you want to keep. After the 30-day Expired status ends, your trial account information and data are permanently deleted.

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