Microsoft 365 Storage Limits
Microsoft has significantly changed their Microsoft 365 Education storage quota. They are reducing the amount of pooled storage allotted to education organizations. UConn, like many other institutions, must alter our short- and long-term storage strategies before our new quota is imposed early in 2026.
What is pooled storage?
Pooled storage is the total amount of data stored by all UConn users in Exchange (Outlook email), OneDrive, and SharePoint. In our environment, OneDrive usage consumes the largest amount of storage and is growing the fastest. SharePoint is second, and Outlook uses the least amount.
Storage usage in Microsoft 365 has steadily increased, and it is a service that our community should use. Most institutional files must be stored on Microsoft 365 because it meets audit and compliance requirements, provides data recovery, and prevents data loss. Use of external, unsupported storage options creates security, regulatory, and compliance risks.
The new Microsoft limits, however, necessitate changes that will help us better contain growth and manage the high cost of storage. If we exceed the limit of our pooled storage, Microsoft 365 services stop, and all files for everyone become read-only.
The University is pursuing the following strategies to reclaim and reduce storage:
Archive historical institutional data that needs to be retained but not frequently retrieved.
Update the version history retention in OneDrive and SharePoint
Implement lifecycle policies for SharePoint sites to reduce abandoned sites
Close abandoned OneDrive sites that no longer have an owner
These efforts alone, however, are not enough to sustainably keep our pooled storage below the new limit. Since OneDrive usage consumes the largest amount of storage and is growing the fastest, we need to slow growth and will be lowering individual storage quotas over the coming months.
Undergraduates: 50 GB
Student Employees: 50GB
Graduate students: 100 GB
Affiliates: 100 GB
Faculty and Staff: 200 GB
Emeritus: 200 GB
These limits will be slowly rolled out over the coming months and with ample communication. University-supported solutions will be found for institutional data. For the vast majority of our community, these limits will not affect them. View ITS’s guide to check your current storage usage.
Individuals can prepare by deleting data they don’t need, such as multiple backups and redundant files. Personal files should be moved to non-UConn storage solutions. Please view https://uconn.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/IKB/pages/27519090763 for more information.
OneDrive is Microsoft’s cloud storage solution for individuals and is provided to you while you are enrolled in classes or affiliated with UConn.