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 in April 2026.

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.

Below are the initial steps that the University is pursuing:

• Develop and communicate broadly about retention standards: Not all data needs to be or even should be saved in perpetuity.

• Use low-cost storage for archived data: We have moved some historical institutional data that needs to be retained but not frequently retrieved.

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 Reduce OneDrive Storage for more information.

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

• Graduate students: 100 GB

• Faculty and Staff: 200 GB

• Student Employees: 50GB

• Affiliates: 100 GB

• Emeritus: 50 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.