Field notes on Microsoft 365 storage
Practical writing on cost, reclaim playbooks, Copilot data quality, retention and audit — from the LogiSam team behind TSO.
04 Oct 20267 min readMicrosoft will not deactivate your tenant due to storage excess — but here is what actually breaks
The quota ceiling in Microsoft 365 does not shut your tenant down. It stops specific things working, in a specific order, with specific warning signs. Here is what happens and what to do before it does.
StorageQuotaMicrosoft 365Read
02 Oct 20266 min readDo you really need to pay for Microsoft 365 extra storage? A buy-vs-reclaim decision guide
Microsoft charges $0.20 per GB per month for SharePoint additional storage. Most tenants that reach the ceiling should clean, not buy. Here is the decision framework and the numbers behind it.
CostFinanceMicrosoft 365Read
30 Sept 20268 min readMicrosoft 365 storage limits in 2026: the complete reference
Every storage limit on a Microsoft 365 tenant, grouped by workload. SharePoint pooled quota, per-user OneDrive, mailbox size, archive, Teams, version history, recycle bins — with the practical caveats every admin needs.
ReferenceMicrosoft 365SharePointRead
26 Sept 20269 min readSharePoint storage optimisation: 10 wins in a 90-day plan
A practical, dated playbook for reducing SharePoint storage by 20-40% over three months. Ten specific actions, ranked by impact, drawn from 50+ real customer tenants.
SharePointPlaybookStorage OptimisationRead
23 Sept 20267 min readWhere Microsoft 365 storage hides: a tenant admin's field guide
Nine places storage accumulates in a Microsoft 365 tenant that do not show up in the top-level admin centre view. Preservation holds, archive mailboxes, Teams recordings, version tails and more.
Microsoft 365Storage OptimisationAdminRead
19 Sept 20268 min readThe complete 2026 guide to Microsoft 365 storage pricing
Every M365 storage line item, with the exact price in force in 2026. SharePoint pooled, additional storage add-ons, Exchange archives, OneDrive premium tiers, and the volume discounts most tenants never apply.
PricingMicrosoft 365CostRead
16 Sept 20269 min readSelling storage audits as an MSP: the pitch, the pricing, the playbook
Microsoft 365 storage audits are the rare service that sells itself — every client tenant has 20-40% reclaimable bloat and the report pays for itself in the first month. Here is the pitch that closes, the pricing that works, and the process to deliver at scale.
MSPSalesPlaybookRead
12 Sept 20267 min readTeams meeting recordings are eating your SharePoint quota (and here is the fix)
A one-hour Teams meeting recording is about 400 MB. Multiply by a busy tenant and you get double-digit terabytes of video nobody has watched twice. Where they live, who pays for them, and the three settings that stop the bleed.
TeamsStorageGovernanceRead
08 Sept 20266 min readOneDrive after they leave: the 30-day rule nobody actually enforces
Microsoft retains a leaver's OneDrive for 30 days by default, then deletes it. Almost every tenant we scan has OneDrives from employees who left years ago — still occupying quota, still holding drafts Copilot can quote. Here is the process that actually works.
OneDriveGovernanceLeaversRead
05 Sept 20267 min readThe 500-version default: why every SharePoint library is quietly hoarding storage
Every SharePoint document library ships with major versioning on and a cap of 500 versions per file. On a 250 MB InDesign file that is 125 GB per file. Here is where the storage actually goes, and what to change without breaking anyone's workflow.
SharePointVersionsReclaimRead
15 Aug 20267 min readWhat are you really paying for? A plain-English guide to M365 storage costs
Microsoft charges storage in three different ways depending on where the file lives. Here is exactly what each byte costs in 2026, and where finance teams tend to lose track.
CostFundamentalsFinOpsRead
01 Aug 20269 min readRunning out of M365 storage? Here is a 30-minute checklist that usually reclaims 10-20%
When the SharePoint quota alerts start firing, buying more storage is the expensive answer. Here is a pragmatic checklist that gets most tenants back under quota without deleting a single business-critical file.
SharePointReclaimPlaybookRead
18 Jul 20268 min readYour Copilot is hallucinating? It might be your data, not the model
Copilot for Microsoft 365 searches everything the user can see. If that includes a decade of stale, duplicated and contradictory files, hallucinations become the polite word for it.
CopilotAIGovernanceRead
04 Jul 20266 min readDo you really need that HR policy from 2010? A retention-first mindset for M365
Storage is cheap, retention is expensive. Keeping everything indefinitely stopped being a defensible position around the time GDPR was drafted. Here is how to have the retention conversation with the people who own the data.
RetentionGovernanceGDPRRead
20 Jun 20267 min readDuplicates: the tax you did not know you were paying
Every M365 tenant hoards duplicates. The average enterprise we scan has 8-15% of its SharePoint bytes tied up in exact copies of the same file. Here is why, and what to do about it.
DuplicatesReclaimRead
06 Jun 20266 min readRead-only by design: what that actually means for a storage optimizer
Every vendor claims "read-only". Very few explain what they are asking for at the Graph permission layer or what they store on their side. Here is exactly what TSO asks for and why.
SecurityGraph APIRead
25 May 20265 min readThe audit trail a tenant scan should leave behind
If you are running scans on live production tenants, "trust me, it was read-only" is not enough. Here is what a defensible audit trail looks like — for your security team and for a customer regulator.
ComplianceAuditRead
10 May 20268 min readFrom scan to savings: a 90-day plan for a mid-size tenant
The first scan is the easy part. Turning findings into a reclaim programme is where most storage projects stall. Here is the 90-day plan we walk customers through.
PlaybookFinOpsRead