active-directory-users-restore.md

title	description	services	author	manager	ms.service	ms.workload	ms.subservice	ms.topic	ms.date	ms.author	ms.reviewer	ms.custom	ms.collection
Restore or permanently remove recently deleted user - Azure AD	How to view restorable users, restore a deleted user, or permanently delete a user with Azure Active Directory.	active-directory	ajburnle	daveba	active-directory	identity	fundamentals	how-to	10/23/2020	ajburnle	jeffsta	it-pro, seodec18	M365-identity-device-management

Restore or remove a recently deleted user using Azure Active Directory

After you delete a user, the account remains in a suspended state for 30 days. During that 30-day window, the user account can be restored, along with all its properties. After that 30-day window passes, the permanent deletion process is automatically started.

You can view your restorable users, restore a deleted user, or permanently delete a user using Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) in the Azure portal.

Important

Neither you nor Microsoft customer support can restore a permanently deleted user.

Required permissions

You must have one of the following roles to restore and permanently delete users.

• Global administrator

• Partner Tier1 Support

• Partner Tier2 Support

• User administrator

View your restorable users

You can see all the users that were deleted less than 30 days ago. These users can be restored.

To view your restorable users

1. Sign in to the Azure portal using a Global administrator account for the organization.

2. Select Azure Active Directory, select Users, and then select Deleted users.

   Review the list of users that are available to restore.

   

Restore a recently deleted user

When a user account is deleted from the organization, the account is in a suspended state and all the related organization information is preserved. When you restore a user, this organization information is also restored.

Note

Once a user is restored, licenses that were assigned to the user at the time of deletion are also restored even if there are no seats available for those licenses. If you are then consuming more licenses more than you purchased, your organization could be temporarily out of compliance for license usage.

To restore a user

1. On the Users - Deleted users page, search for and select one of the available users. For example, Mary Parker.

2. Select Restore user.

   

Permanently delete a user

You can permanently delete a user from your organization without waiting the 30 days for automatic deletion. A permanently deleted user can't be restored by you, another administrator, nor by Microsoft customer support.

Note

If you permanently delete a user by mistake, you'll have to create a new user and manually enter all the previous information. For more information about creating a new user, see Add or delete users.

To permanently delete a user

1. On the Users - Deleted users page, search for and select one of the available users. For example, Rae Huff.

2. Select Delete permanently.

   

Next steps

After you've restored or deleted your users, you can:

• Add or delete users

• Assign roles to users

• Add or change profile information

• Add guest users from another organization

For more information about other available user management tasks, Azure AD user management documentation.