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Lost a document in an old account and need to retrieve it

Ulliana Igorevna Vasilieva 0 Reputation points
2025-12-19T18:48:33.55+00:00

Hello, I had a Microsoft365 account under a University of California Santa Cruz email. The benefits of that school email (such as Microsoft 365) have been since revoked after my graduating. I lost a very important document on it. Please help me retrieve it.

Microsoft 365 and Office | OneDrive | For education | MacOS
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  1. Austin-H 8,355 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator
    2025-12-19T23:36:43.2266667+00:00

    Hi Ulliana Igorevna Vasilieva
    Thank you for posting question to Microsoft Q&A Forum.
    I'm very sorry to hear that you are looking for this lost document from the old university account. However, as this is peer-to-peer support forum where I am moderator who does not have access in internal system to asssist you with recovery.

    As Q&A Assist mentioned above, only your university's IT admin could help you by using Content Search. Details about it could be found at this link: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/microsoft-security-blog/getting-started-with-the-new-purview-content-search/4405757
    If your account has been disabled for a long time after graduation - that could result in unfortunate result. Please check with them whether they disabled/deleted your account.
    I hope this information is helpful.

    Note: Please follow the steps in our documentation to enable e-mail notifications if you want to receive the related email notification for this thread.

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  2. AI answer

    2025-12-19T18:48:43.1666667+00:00

    Unfortunately, if you have lost access to your Microsoft 365 account associated with your University of California Santa Cruz email, Microsoft cannot assist with the recovery of work or school accounts. You will need to work with your university's IT administrator for any account access issues. If you had important documents saved to OneDrive or SharePoint under that account, they may also be inaccessible without the account credentials.

    To prevent similar issues in the future, it's recommended to add a personal Microsoft account to your learn profile, ensuring continued access to your documents regardless of your employment or academic status.

    References:

    AI-generated content may be incorrect. Read our transparency notes for more information.

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