The Microsoft’s announcement “Changes to storage offerings across Microsoft 365 Education” marks the termination of the university’s complimentary storage allocation. This impacts many higher education institutions worldwide, including ours.

With the anticipated storage cap and a substantial increase in licensing costs, we foresee a reduction in storage capacity for all Microsoft 365 user accounts, including mailboxes and OneDrive, by 1 July 2026. Additionally, we also seek alternative measures to cope with this change.

Microsoft announced the change on,

• Beginning at a school’s next contract renewal (CUHK is 1 July 2026), but no sooner than 1 August, 2024, all school tenants will receive 100TB ​of free pooled storage across OneDrive, SharePoint, and Exchange, with additional pooled storage per paid user, depending on the school’s subscription.
• Additional storage can be purchased in 10TB ($300 USD estimated retail per month) increments based on needs.
• Effective February 2024, users of Office 365 A1 (free subscription) will be limited to a maximum of 100GB for OneDrive storage, within the 100TB of pooled storage for the school tenant.

This implies a substantial increase in the license fees if we choose to continue with our current storage usage.

A new Microsoft 365 storage quota for all user accounts is being evaluated and revised.  The new storage limits will be communicated as soon as they are ready.

The schedule is subject to change. Additional details will be added as they become available.

In Progress

• Review your storage utilization regularly to understand how much you are using. Backup by moving important files to a location such as a local drive or another cloud storage etc., and remove unnecessary files in OneDrive.
• Click here to learn how to review your usage and identify large files in OneDrive.

• Nov 2023: ITSC homepage, LAN Admin Meeting
• Dec 2023 – Jan 2024: Mass Mail to affected user groups
• Feb 2024: ITSC eNewsletter Issue 194, ITSC Student User Consultation Group Meeting
• May 2024: ITSC eNewsletter Issue 195
• Jun: LAN Admin Meeting
• Jun – Dec 2024: Mass Mail to all

• Update on Microsoft 365 Storage Limit: Email & OneDrive
• OneDrive Cleanup Tips for Better Experience
• SharePoint Cleanup Tips for Better Experience

ITSC Service Desk