Microsoft tells nonprofits their deleted M365 data is not coming back

Microsoft has confirmed that it accidentally deleted some nonprofit customers' Microsoft 365 data before their retention period expired, and now says it cannot tell those organizations what disappeared, or even whether they lost anything at all. The Register reported the case on Monday.

The trouble followed the retirement of the Microsoft 365 Business Premium grant, which gave eligible nonprofits ten free licenses for the productivity suite. Microsoft announced in May 2025 that the grant would not renew after July 1 that year. It offered eligible organizations up to 300 free Microsoft 365 Business Basic licenses, alongside discounted pricing for plans including Business Premium.

A window that closed early

The company urged customers to move users onto another nonprofit plan before cancellation to avoid disruption or data loss, and to export anything they did not intend to keep in Microsoft 365. The problem arose after the subscriptions were deactivated. In an email to one affected customer seen by The Register, Microsoft admitted that, "due to an error," it had deleted remaining data before the retention and export window had closed.

Attempts to recover it failed. "We have now investigated the recovery options, but unfortunately, the data cannot be recovered," the company wrote to the customer.

No list of what vanished

Microsoft also says it cannot determine what disappeared. It is "currently unable to provide a list showing which data may have been deleted or whether any data was deleted at all." It could say only that the problem involved expired Business Premium subscriptions.

In a statement to The Register, a Microsoft spokesperson confirmed the premature deletion. "After the applicable notice periods concluded and subscriptions were terminated, an error resulted in remaining data, if any, being deleted before the retention period had ended," the spokesperson said. "The impacted content would have been data associated with a customer's expired M365 Business Premium subscription."

What Microsoft offers now

The company did not say how many nonprofits were affected, how prematurely the deletion occurred, or what caused the error. It said it regretted the impact and is offering affected organizations a free "concierge service": a meeting with a Microsoft specialist to help set up a new Microsoft 365 environment and answer questions.

That is useful for a replacement environment, but it does not replace the data Microsoft deleted from the old one. In August, Slate reported that roughly 171,000 small nonprofits were said to have lost OneDrive content the same way. The company told Slate the old offers were "retired to streamline our grant offerings and simplify our grant portfolio."

The episode is a reminder that a free grant is not a guarantee: its terms change at the provider's discretion, and a backup kept outside the same ecosystem is the only dependable safety net.