Recover lost data

Greg Kelly 0 Reputation points
2026-11-11T19:19:18.94+00:00

Our nonprofit account used to be a free account. When we had to start paying for our account, I set it up, but all of our cloud data did not show up on our account once I set it up as a paid account. How can we go back and get all the cloud data that was lost?

Microsoft 365 and Office | OneDrive | For business | Other
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  1. Kai-L 21,435 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator
    2026-11-11T20:10:34.1666667+00:00

    Dear Greg,

    As a forum moderator, I am not able to review your tenant or accounts to locate the data directly. My role here is limited to providing general guidance you can apply from your side. Your data is most likely not deleted. When a free offer moves to a paid plan, files stay with the original user accounts. They won't show if those accounts no longer have a license, or if the paid subscription was set up in a new tenant or under new user accounts.

    To find out which applies, sign in to onedrive.com in a private browser window with the original work email you used before. Also check the organization name at the top of the Microsoft 365 admin center under Settings > Org settings, or the onmicrosoft.com domain under Settings > Domains, and compare it with the old account. Here's what to do in each case:

    • The original users still exist: In the Microsoft 365 admin center, go to Users > Active users, select each original user, and assign them a paid license that includes OneDrive. Their files should become available again after the license is applied.
    • The original users were deleted: Go to Users > Deleted users. Deleted users and their OneDrive files can only be restored for a limited time, so please do this as soon as possible.
    • The paid plan is in a different tenant: The files stay in the old tenant and don't move over automatically. You'll need to sign in to the old tenant to restore access, then copy or migrate the files to the new one.

    Please don't delete or recreate any of the original accounts until your files are recovered.

    If you can't access the old accounts or tenant, I recommend that you create a service request with Microsoft Support. A technical support engineer can perform a remote session to investigate the situation, verify the backend configurations, and run any necessary synchronization tools to resolve the problem. Include the old and new organization names or domains, and roughly when the switch happened. For detailed instructions on how to get support, please refer to Get support - Microsoft 365 admin.

    For additional assistance, use this link to find the appropriate contact number from your region: Contact Microsoft customer support | Microsoft Support 

    I hope you get your files back soon. If you have any updates, feel free to share them here.


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