Inactive teams in Microsoft 365 often persist after a project ends and may go unnoticed. Without proper oversight, these unused teams can create security risks and lead to data leaks. This guide shows how to identify inactive teams in Microsoft 365, apply the right controls, limit unnecessary access, and keep your Microsoft Teams environment secure.
Windows PowerShell Windows PowerShell 
AdminDroid’s Microsoft Teams reporting tool helps you find inactive teams across your organization by analyzing chat messages, meeting activity, file sharing, and more. It ensures efficient Microsoft Teams management by highlighting teams that haven’t shown recent activity.
Identify and recover recently deleted teams that were previously inactive to prevent unintentional loss of historical data, project context, and critical conversations that may still hold value for future reference or audits.
Find empty teams with no members or owners using AdminDroid, and take action to remove or repurpose them to maintain a clean environment, minimize overhead in team administration, and enhance overall M365 governance.
Detect inactive teams users with no recent meetings, chats, or calls, and revoke Teams add-on licenses to cut Microsoft 365 costs, streamline user management, and maximize license efficiency.
Monitor overall teams user activities such as messaging, meetings, and channel engagement across all Microsoft Teams to identify inactivity trends and take timely action to archive or renew them for better collaboration flow.
Utilize AdminDroid's inactive teams report collection to find teams based on the last unique message sent, last message post and reply, last reaction, and last meeting organized, to ensure that only users of active and relevant teams retain access to resources.
Get a list of teams with file storage over warning quota to manage storage issues proactively, prevent upload restrictions, and ensure uninterrupted collaboration within Microsoft Teams.
Overall, AdminDroid’s Microsoft Teams management tool empowers IT admins with deep visibility into inactive teams, their owners, user activities, and lifecycle trends. It helps prevent license wastage, recover recently deleted teams, assign team ownership, and clean up empty teams, thereby making team governance easier and more efficient.
This error occurs when a user or least privileged admin tries to connect to the Microsoft Graph PowerShell module without an admin consent on behalf of the organization.
This error occurs when executing the 'Get-MgReportTeamActivityDetail' cmdlet in PowerShell without necessary scope permissions or role assignments.
This error occurs while accessing Microsoft Teams usage reports in the Microsoft 365 admin center when your organization has enabled the 'Display concealed names in all reports' setting.
This error occurs when running the 'Get-MgReportTeamActivityDetail' cmdlet in PowerShell with the -Date parameter set to a value outside the 28-day limit supported by the Microsoft Graph Reports API.
In every Microsoft 365 organization, teams are created to manage project communications and files. Once the project ends, these teams may hold sensitive data that no longer needs to be accessed. Keeping them active not only increases compliance risks but also leads to a cluttered Teams environment. By archiving such inactive teams, organizations can retain information while maintaining security and compliance standards in Microsoft Teams.
Note: Even when the SharePoint Online site is set to read-only mode, team owners will be able to edit the content.
Manual identification and archiving of inactive teams through the Teams admin center can be error-prone and time-consuming. Instead, you can run the PowerShell command to quickly detect unused teams based on a defined inactivity period and archive them efficiently.
Connect to the Microsoft Graph PowerShell module using the cmdlet below.
To get the Team ID of a specific team, you can use the following cmdlet:
Then, run the following cmdlet in PowerShell to archive a specific inactive team in Microsoft 365.
Replace <TeamId> with the actual ID of the team you want to archive before executing the cmdlet.
Archiving inactive teams manually via Teams admin center or using individual PowerShell cmdlets requires multiple steps and repetitive actions, which makes the process inefficient especially in large environments. That's why we have developed a PowerShell script to automate the entire process. It retrieves activity data, filters teams based on inactivity, and archives multiple teams in one go-saving time and reducing the chance of human error.
To archive all teams that have been inactive for the past 180 days, run the PowerShell script as mentioned below.
Whenever a team is created, a Microsoft 365 group is automatically created to support it. Microsoft Teams relies on these groups for its structure and functionality. When group expiration policies are enabled, teams linked to those groups are affected too. By Understanding what happens to teams when a group expires helps IT admins manage Microsoft Teams effectively. It also helps avoid unintended data loss and maintain control over the collaboration lifecycle.
1. Renewal notifications are sent to team owners:
2. If no action is taken, the Microsoft 365 group expires:
3. The deleted team is recoverable for 30 days:
Note: Encourage team owners to act on expiration emails to avoid data loss. If your teams don’t have owners, configure a backup contact in the expiration policy settings.
Group expiration doesn’t just clean up inactive Teams, it initiates a defined lifecycle that includes notifications, deletion, and recovery options. By staying informed about each stage, admins can prevent unintentional data loss, ensure critical teams are renewed on time, and maintain a streamlined Teams environment.
When the Microsoft 365 group expiration policy is enabled, unmonitored team expiration can result in unexpected deletions, disrupt ongoing projects and team collaboration. Regularly checking expiration and renewal status enables admins to take early action and maintain a secure MS Teams environment.
Connect to the Microsoft Graph PowerShell module using the cmdlet below.
Run the following cmdlet in PowerShell to retrieve all expiring teams in your Microsoft 365 environment.
Manual tracking team expiration and renewal status is difficult in the Teams admin center, and even PowerShell demands time to script and maintain. AdminDroid simplifies this task with timely reports that offer complete visibility
Get insights into the Teams expiration policy in Microsoft 365 with AdminDroid!
Handy tip: Utilize the Schedule (⏰) option available within the report to receive regular insights via email in formats such as CSV, PDF, XLS, and more.
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