Finding and exporting your OneDrive data

What it holds

OneDrive contains each user’s work files, folders and shared documents, including some Teams chat attachments and meeting recordings. Retained versions and former employees’ drives can extend the history beyond currently active accounts.

Where OneDrive shows the size

1. Sign in to the Microsoft 365 admin center as a SharePoint Administrator, Reports Reader or Global Administrator.
2. Go to Reports, Usage, OneDrive and open the Usage tab for accounts, files and storage.
3. Export the CSV, total Storage used (MB) and divide by 1,024.
4. If owners are hidden, a Global Administrator can turn off name concealment in Org Settings.
5. Check the Deleted column. Only licensed users appear, and deleted users drop out after 180 days, so ask your SharePoint admin whether older leavers' OneDrives still exist.

Plan and admin role. Any Microsoft 365 plan with OneDrive. Reports need Global Administrator, SharePoint Administrator, Exchange Administrator or Reports Reader.

Exporting the full history

1. Before anyone else is removed, make sure access delegation is on and a secondary owner is set in the SharePoint admin center's user profile settings.
2. Extend how long deleted users' OneDrives are kept (Settings, Retention, up to 3,650 days).
3. Add the exporter to eDiscovery Manager in Purview, create a case and search all users or the ones you need.
4. Export with departed users included and choose how many file versions to keep.
5. Download from Process manager within 14 days.
6. For one person, they, their manager or the secondary owner can sync the OneDrive and copy the files.

A deleted user's OneDrive is kept for 30 days by default, then sits in a recycle bin for 93 days where eDiscovery can't reach it.

Unlicensed OneDrives are archived after 93 days, and may be deleted after a year in archive regardless of holds.

Browser downloads stop at 10,000 files and 20 GB per ZIP; use eDiscovery if you need older versions.

You don't need to run an export to talk to us, and there's no need to clean it first — removing personal data is part of our work.