Microsoft 365 subscribers set to lose up to 4TB of OneDrive storage

Microsoft 365 subscribers on Family, Premium, or Pro tiers who make full use of their OneDrive storage allotments consider this a warning: It's fixin' to shrink. Redmond published a support page this week detailing changes to Microsoft 365 shared storage allotments, and while the company is painting them as offering greater flexibility for users, they also represent a massive reduction in capacity. The former storage allotment schema offered 1TB per user on all three of those tiers, with a cap of six users, for a total of 6TB. The new storage quotas will be shared among all users on those accounts, still with a six-user cap. Family or Premium plans now get 2TB of storage space to share among up to six users. Pro tier users will have to share 5TB. In effect, that means fully shared Family and Premium subscriptions will lose up to 4 TB of combined storage capacity, while Pro subscriptions will lose up to 1 TB. Some existing customers may qualify for temporary bonus storage. On the plus side, there's no longer a fixed 1 TB cap per person, provided the shared pool has room. The goal is to provide a more flexible experience," Microsoft offers as its justification for the move. Shared storage helps ensure that one person doesn't run out of space while other members have unused storage available." That might be great for heavy users on an account, who can now go over a 1TB cap, but if, say, four people on a family plan are all using 500GB and someone wants to upload something else, that's too bad. You can always buy more OneDrive space, of course. Microsoft appears to understand that users might see this as a reduction in storage, posing an FAQ question: "Is this change a reduction in storage?" The answer again highlights "flexibility," and helpfully notes, "For example, if the subscription owner doesn't share the plan, they can use the full shared storage allotment." (Individual plans already exist but top out at 1TB.) Microsoft also appears to understand that the move might cause a backlash, and has included subscription cancellation steps right on the support page for the change. New Family, Premium, and Pro tier subscribers as of Thursday will see this new storage allotment schema. Existing subscribers will be hit with the change when their plans renew on or after May 2, 2027. Microsoft said it will remind users of the change as their renewal date approaches. Customers are not thrilled about this move. A thread on Reddit discussing the change has nothing positive to say about it, with commenters noting that they're likely to cancel their subscriptions rather than let them renew and face a storage reduction and a need to clean up files. Much of the Microsoft365 subreddit, as of writing, is filled with posts complaining about the move, with one of the top posts reminding people to turn off their automatic renewal to avoid getting hit with the storage slash. The Windows maker has a semi-regular habit of slashing cloud storage allotments for its 365 customers. Office 365 used to come with unlimited cloud storage, but that offer ended after some users actually took unlimited to mean unlimited. Storage tiers have been further reduced over the years, most recently in 2024 when McGill University drastically slashed students' OneDrive allowances to 20 GB following Microsoft's changes to education storage allocations. In other words, don't get too comfortable with 2TB of shared storage for six people - that deal, too, may be altered further. (R)