Microsoft 365 Storage Management Changes - Alumni
Overview
Due to changes to Microsoft's educational licensing, SPU must resize the campus M365 storage tenant to coincide with updated quotas. Adjusting storage limits will help prevent any overages that result in disrupted application functionality for all users. Please read further about this policy change here, under Account Termination and Resource Purge Policies, and see more data about quota changes here, under License Comparison.
Alumni resources impacted include:
Resizing active alumni Outlook inboxes to 5GB
Deleting inactive alumni Outlook inboxes
These changes will take effect on April 27th, 2026
The data shows that a large percentage of alumni do not actively use their Outlook email accounts. However, the current alumni population will be provided with the opportunity to maintain their Outlook inbox & email address continually, as long as the email inbox is actively used once a year; see the instructions below in Email Retention.
Alumni can also set up email forwarding to an external email if they want to retain the email address but do not need an active inbox, as their inboxes will be resized to a 5GB limit regardless of retention. Likewise, alumni can decide to migrate their inbox data to an external email or downsize their inbox data; see the instructions below in Mailbox Capacity Management.
Worth additional note, is that OneDrive storage accounts for Students have always been set to expire four quarters after a student’s last registered class. Some accounts persisted beyond that time due to an internal oversight. Those accounts were recently removed, and future accounts will continue to expire per our Microsoft 365 Licensing policy.
Instructional Documentation
Email Retention
An alumnus must continue to actively use their SPU mailbox at least once annually to keep it active, in accordance with SPU’s updated policy.
All alumni should have received an email indicating whether their email has been determined as currently active or inactive to be retained for the following year. However, to be certain that the email will be retained, please initiate a new Webmail login to mark it as active.
To update the account password or recover the SPU username first, please navigate to SPU Find My ID.
Mailbox Capacity Management
To check the current total storage usage in Webmail, click Settings (gear symbol) > Account > Storage.
Forward all incoming SPU emails to an external address rather than maintaining the SPU inbox.
Migrate Inbox Data to Another Service
Move existing data to an external email inbox.
Delete or compact data to save space.
Additional Resources
Review the updated SPU policy regarding alumni resources, under Account Termination and Resource Purge Policies.
For any technical questions, please email itsupport@spu.edu or submit a ticket at the IT Support Desk.