No Microsoft 365 Archive Fee to Reactivate Sites After March 31, 2025

In a February 20, 2025 announcement, Microsoft said that they will remove reactivation fees for archived SharePoint Online sites. Some tenants will see the reduction in fees in early March and the change will roll out gradually worldwide for completion by the end of March 2025.

When Microsoft launched Microsoft 365 Archive, they charged $0.60 per GB to reactivate a site by moving its content from “cold” (long-term, archived) storage to “hot” (online, immediately-accessible) storage. Reactivation is immediate for sites archived within the last week, while sites archived for longer take approximately 24 hours to come back online.

Following the removal of the site reactivation fee, Microsoft will only charge the ongoing monthly storage cost of $0.05/GB. Storage fees don’t apply when they can be offset against the tenant’s unused SharePoint Online storage quota, so depending on how many sites they archive and how much content exists in those sites, some organizations might be able to use Microsoft 365 Archive for free.

A restriction does apply in that reactivated sites cannot be moved back into the archive for four months after reactivation. Microsoft says that the restriction is there to stop constant movement in and out of archive storage.

Keep Material Online but Prevent Copilot Access

One of the nice things about archiving sites is that it makes site content inaccessible for Microsoft 365 Copilot. There’s nothing worse than having AI-generated results being polluted by old, obsolete, and probably misleading information, and even if steps are taken to stop Copilot using content in its responses, Copilot can still find and use document library metadata because it exists in Microsoft Search.

I can’t think of a downside to moving old sites into the archive if you want to keep the material stored in the sites. Archived sites are still accessible for eDiscovery, the storage costs are a lot lower than hot online SharePoint storage, and now you can reactivate archived sites free when necessary.

Archived OneDrive Accounts

But you won’t be able to reactivate archived OneDrive for Business accounts free of charge because Microsoft excludes these objects from the removal of reactivation fees. The big idea behind automatically archiving unlicensed OneDrive for Business accounts is to force organizations to do something with accounts that might have been around for ten years or more. The unlicensed OneDrive accounts occupy valuable online storage and because Microsoft encourages the use of OneDrive for Business to hold all manner of files from Teams meeting recordings to PowerShell modules, a significant amount of storage can be occupied.

Microsoft released a report to help tenant administrators decide how to deal with unlicensed OneDrive for Business accounts in August 2024. By now, administrators should have a good handle on the unlicensed accounts within the tenant and know whether they will let automatic archiving happen (and be willing to pay the ongoing storage fees) or take action to remove the unlicensed accounts.

According to recently-revised Microsoft documentation, unlicensed accounts fall into two categories: those unlicensed before February 17, 2025, and those unlicensed afterward. The first batch includes all the historically unlicensed accounts. By April 25, 2025, these accounts will be in read-only mode to prepare them to move into the archive. This process will happen in the background and the unlicensed accounts will be archived by May 16, 2025, including the set shown in Figure 1. Once archived, tenants must pay to reactivate unlicensed OneDrive for Business accounts.

OneDrive for Business accounts that become unlicensed now are placed into read-only mode sixty days after they become unlicensed (for instance, the owning user account is deleted but the OneDrive data is kept by a retention policy, or the user account loses its license to allow them to use OneDrive for Business).

Thirty-three days afterward (93 days after the removal of the license), SharePoint Online will either move to the OneDrive account into the archive or into the recycle bin. Movement into the archive happens when a retention policy applies to the owner’s account.

Lower Fees are Always Appreciated

It’s good that Microsoft has removed the site reactivation fee. While not a lot in the overall scheme of things, getting rid of fees always encourage more use of facilities, and using Microsoft 365 Archive to store old material that the organization cannot remove is a good tactic. Some might question why the same logic doesn’t apply to archived OneDrive for Business accounts. That’s for Microsoft to answer, but I bet that they just want to get people used to the idea of paying to keep old OneDrive content online before they move on charges.

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