Your Team Is About to Expire

Questions

  • I got an email saying my Microsoft Team will expire. Is the message real?
  • How do I renew a Microsoft Team?
  • Why did an expiration notice arrive when our department still uses this Team?
  • What happens to our files if a Team expires?
  • Can a Team be brought back after it has been deleted for expiring?
  • Does renewing a Team change anything about its files, links, or membership?
  • Our project is finished. Should we just let the Team expire?
  • I cannot find Renew now anywhere in the Team. What am I missing?
  • Who at Bowdoin receives the expiration warning email?

Environment

This article applies to anyone who owns a Microsoft Team at Bowdoin. Renewing a Team requires Team owner permissions, so members cannot renew a Team and members do not receive the warning emails.

  • You are an owner of the Team named in the expiration email, and you are signed in with your Bowdoin account. Sign in at office365.bowdoin.edu for the web app.
  • The Renew now control appears in team settings, and its exact placement varies between versions of Microsoft Teams.
  • Owner controls are available in the Microsoft Teams desktop app on Bowdoin-issued Windows 11 computers and on Bowdoin-issued Mac computers running macOS Sequoia (15.x), Tahoe (26.x), or newer, in Microsoft Teams on the web, and in the Microsoft Teams app on the current version of iPadOS. Personal devices are supported on a best-effort basis only.
  • Not in scope: transferring a Team that has no owner at all. For that situation, see When a Team Owner Leaves in the Related Articles section.
  • Not in scope: deleting a Team on purpose or recovering one that was deleted on purpose. For those tasks, see Delete a Team, and Recover One in the Related Articles section.

Resolution

What the Microsoft Teams expiration email means

An email warning that a Team is about to expire is legitimate. Microsoft 365 deletes Teams that nobody has used for a long time so that abandoned Teams do not pile up. Bowdoin's Teams are set to expire after 180 days of inactivity, and Microsoft emails every owner of the Team 30 days, 15 days, and 1 day before the expiration date.

Only owners receive the warning email. A Team that has no owner sends its warnings to nobody at Bowdoin, and the Team then expires silently. A Team with no owner is the single most common way a department loses its files.

Note: An expiration warning from Microsoft is not a phishing message, but it is worth confirming that the message names a Team you actually own before acting on it. Renewing from inside Microsoft Teams, rather than from a link in the email, avoids the question entirely.

What counts as activity that renews a Team automatically

Ordinary use resets the 180-day clock without anyone taking a deliberate renewal step. Microsoft counts a channel visit by any member of the Team, and Microsoft counts viewing, editing, downloading, moving, sharing, or uploading a file in the Team's SharePoint site. Any one of those actions before the expiration date renews the Team on its own.

A Team that receives a warning email is therefore a Team nobody has opened in months. Storing files in a Team is not activity: someone has to open the Team or work with a file in it.

Renew a Team from team settings

  1. Open Teams and find the Team named in the expiration email in your Teams list.
  2. Select More options next to the Team name, then select Manage team.
  3. Open the Settings tab.
  4. Select Renew now.

Renewing restarts the 180-day clock and changes nothing else. Membership, channels, files, permissions, links, and the SharePoint site address all stay exactly as they were, so there is no downside to renewing a Team whose future is still undecided.

Done: Once Renew now has been selected, the Team is good for another 180 days of inactivity, and no further confirmation is needed.

What is lost if nobody renews the Team

An expired Team is deleted, and the deletion takes everything attached to the Team: the underlying Microsoft 365 group, the SharePoint site holding every channel's files, the Team's OneNote notebook, its Planner plans, and its channel conversations.

The deletion is not immediately permanent. Microsoft holds an expired Team in a soft-deleted state for 30 days, and the Team can be restored in full during that window. Contact the Bowdoin College Service Desk as soon as anyone notices that a Team has disappeared, because the 30 days are already counting.

Warning: After the 30-day soft-delete window closes, an expired Team and everything it contained are permanently deleted and cannot be recovered by anyone at Bowdoin or at Microsoft.

Two owners is the real protection against expiration

Every Team should have at least two owners. A Team with one owner is a single point of failure: if that one person is on leave, changes roles, or leaves the College, nobody receives the warning emails and nobody can renew the Team. Adding a second owner takes a minute and removes the risk permanently. For the steps to add an owner, see Manage Membership of a Team or Channel in the Related Articles section, and for the wider set of owner duties, see What a Microsoft Team Owner Is Responsible For in the Related Articles section.

What to do with a Team the department has finished using

Letting a finished Team expire is the wrong ending, because expiration deletes the files along with the Team and gives the department only 30 days to notice. Two deliberate options are better.

  • Archive the Team when the department may need the content later. Archiving makes the content read-only, keeps the SharePoint site reachable, and can be reversed at any time. For the steps, see Archive Teams and Folders in Microsoft Teams in the Related Articles section.
  • Delete the Team on purpose when the Team should genuinely be removed, after moving anything worth keeping into a Team the department still uses. For the steps, see Delete a Team, and Recover One in the Related Articles section.

Additional Help

If you need further assistance, you have several options:

  • Bowdoin Bot: Chat with Bowdoin Bot directly from any KB page for instant answers.
  • Phone: Call the Bowdoin College Service Desk at (207) 725-3030.
  • In person: Visit the Tech Hub in Smith Union during business hours.
  • Submit a ticket: Request assistance through the Service Catalog.

Additional Resources

 

 

AI-assisted content: This article was created with AI. It was verified and edited by a human.
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Files in Microsoft Teams: Start Here
This article is the starting point for anyone working with files in Microsoft Teams at Bowdoin, and it points to the knowledge base article that covers each task. It contains no procedures of its own, and every article it names is listed in the Related Articles section.