What Happens to Your Data When Someone Leaves
On their last day somebody deletes the account or strips the licence to stop paying for it. Reasonable — and quite often the moment the mail and files are permanently lost. The clock you start, the order that saves it, and the leftovers still open six months later.
The short version
- Removing a Microsoft 365 licence disables the mailbox and deletes it after 30 days; files typically survive around 93
- Correct order: block the sign-in, convert to a shared mailbox, move the files, and only then remove the licence
- A shared mailbox is free, holds up to 50 GB and keeps the whole history — but you must convert before removing the licence
- The usual gap isn't the laptop, it's mail forwarding and the shared logins nobody changed