What is happened with the business data in SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business, if a user leaves the company and his account is deleted and/or his license is withdrawn?

In medium-sized or enterprise companies it is indeed more common, that many employees leave the company at the end of the month and new employees will start at the beginning of a new month. But what happens to the data in SharePoint Online and in the formerly known “MySites”, these days known as OneDrive for Business?

[Update]
Microsoft has changed the basic storage from 10 GB + 500 MB each User to 1TB + 500 MB each user

First an illustration:

Storage:

For all Team sites in SharePoint Online (Office 365) the company has a storage of 10 GB + 500 MB for each user for free. Additional storage may be purchased. In OneDrive for Business each User with a License has 1 TB storage, and later on this year unlimited storage. The illustration shows, that User A is a member of the Team Sites “Marketing” and “Support”. Additionally user A also has shared folders and files with User B and C, but he is the owner.

The company does not have to pay for the the storage of OneDrive for Business, it is becoming increasingly popular, to switch content to OneDrive without ultimately to consider the consequences. You may also may establish a Team site inside your OneDrive for Business, it is a separate site collection.

In our example User A leaves the company. The administrator deletes User A in the Active Directory and/or withdraw the Office 365 License.

 

There is no problem with the two team sites, because User A no longer exist. But in Office 365  there will be an automatic process initiated called “My site Clean Up timer job”. Microsoft has this described in his KB 3042522

the short version:

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A work or school account is deleted from the Microsoft Office 365 admin center or is removed through Active Directory synchronization.

The account deletion is synchronized to SharePoint Online.

The My Site Clean Up timer job runs, and the user profile is marked for deletion. The profile will be preserved in the database in a deleted state for 30 days. This coincides with the time that’s allocated to restore a deleted user account from the Azure Active Directory recycle bin.

If the Manager field is populated for the deleted account, the manager will receive an email message that states that the site will be removed in 30 days and that access to the site is granted to the manager.

If the Manager field isn’t populated for the user account and a secondary owner was configured in Setup My Sites under the User Profile section of the SharePoint admin center, the secondary owner contact will receive an email message that states that the site will be removed in 30 days and that access to the site is granted to the user.

The My Site of xxxxxx is scheduled for deletion in 30 days. As their manager you are now the temporary owner of their site. This temporary ownership gives you access to the site to copy any business-related information you might need. To access the site use this URL: https://xxxx.sharepoint.com/personal/xxxxxxx/_layouts/viewlsts.aspx 

After 27 days, a second email message will be sent to the manager or secondary owner that states that the site will be deleted in three days.

After three days, the profile for the deleted account is deleted from the user profile service.

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Users of OneDrive for Business know, that it is not possible to move data to another User, especially with the web browser. The admin must sync the data of the User A to his local machine (down) and then to the new User X (Up). But you have additionally look for the rights of the documents. This does not work. But luckily there is a solution.

The MigrationWiz form BitTitan may migrate OneDrive for Business Data from any User in Office 365 to another User in Office 365. In our example from User A to User X. For this job the administrator may do this in the 30 days period. But remember, there could be a lot of data.

 

You want to see, how MigrationWiz will work? Here is a Link to the community site of BitTitan, which solve this problem:

Microsoft OneDrive to Microsoft OneDrive Migration Guide

If you decide to migrate, you should read all sections carefully.

In "How do I purchase licenses" it should be noted, that it is a document migration and the Document license type authorize per License 10GB of data per user and up to 10 passes.

After you have migrate the data to the new User X and assign him the rights to work in the Team sites “Marketing” and “Support” it looks like:

You should know, that MigrationWiz does not move data, the data will only be copied.

 

Conclusion:

Currently, manual migration is too costly. Especially when multiple users leave the company, which indeed occurs but more common in large companies. The current limitations of the sync clients (Groove.exe) make it almost impossible to synchronize large amounts of data. A migration via the automation tool MigrationWiz facilitates the administrator or the delegated manager the job so much easier.