Global admins and user management admins can assign or remove a user’s license to use Office 365 services. The admin assigns a license to the user for each service the user needs to access. In most cases, this is done when the user account is first created. For more information, see Create or edit users.
Add a license for one person.
- Go to Admin >Office 365 > Users and groups.
- Choose the user to whom you want to assign a license, and then click Edit
.
- On the Assign licenses page, check the box for the license that you want to assign, and then click Save.
Add or replace a license for several people.
- Go to Admin >Office 365 > Users and groups.
- Choose the users to whom you want to assign a license, and then click Edit .
- On the Assign licenses page, click Replace existing license assignments or Add to existing license assignments, and then check the box for the licenses you want to assign.
- Click Submit, and then click Finish.
For information about editing multiple users, see Create or edit users.
Note Not all services are available in all user locations. For a list of restrictions, see License restrictions for Office 365.
What do you want to do?
Learn more about assigning licenses
A subscription to Office 365 is made up of a number of licenses to a set of services. An organization chooses the services it needs and the number of users that it requires for each of those services, and then the admin assigns a license to each user for each service that user needs to access.
When you assign a license to a user, an initial setup is created in that service for the user. For example:
- When you assign a license to a user for Exchange Online, a mailbox is automatically created for that user.
- When you assign a license to a user for SharePoint Online, the user is automatically assigned edit permissions to the default SharePoint Online team site and has access to the features associated with the license.
- When you assign a license to a user for Lync Online, the user automatically has access to the features associated with the license.
There are two broad categories of tasks that admins perform on licenses:
- Assigning and adding licenses: You can assign licenses to new users when creating new accounts, and you can assign licenses to existing accounts. You can purchase additional licenses, for example, if you have assigned all your licenses for a particular service, and another user needs that service. You can also remove a license from a user entirely if that user won’t need that service again.
Different types of admins can work with licenses in different ways, depending on their roles. Refer to the following table for a summary of the most common options. For a complete list of admin roles and privileges, see Assigning admin roles.
| Admin role |
Assign a license |
Remove a license |
Purchase more licenses |
Delete a user |
| Global admin |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
| Billing admin |
No |
No |
Yes |
No |
| User management admin |
Yes |
Yes |
No |
Yes |
| Service admin |
No |
No |
No |
No |
| Password admin |
No |
No |
No |
No |
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Remove a license from a user
If a user’s job responsibilities change, a global admin or user management admin can remove the licenses that the user no longer needs. In addition, if you have more users assigned to a service than you have available licenses, you can remove licenses from users who no longer use them.
Use this procedure to remove a license from a user.
- Go to Admin >Office 365 > Users and groups.
- Choose the user whose license you want to remove, and then click Edit .
- On the Assign licenses page, uncheck the box for the license that you want to remove, and then click Save.
Caution When you remove a license from a user, all data associated with that user for that service is deleted and—after a grace period of 30 days—can’t be recovered, except for documents saved on SharePoint Online. For example, if you remove a license for Exchange Online from a user, that user’s mailbox is deleted. The mailbox can be recovered within 30 days by reassigning a license to it. After 30 days, the mailbox and its contents are permanently deleted. Because of this, we recommend that you either purchase more licenses or delete user accounts for users who no longer work at your organization.
For more information, see Create or edit users and Change licenses or storage space for your subscription.
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Delete a user to free a license
If an employee leaves your organization, a global admin or user management admin can delete that employee’s account. When you do this, any licenses that had been assigned to that person become available and can be assigned to other users. For more information, see Create or edit users.
Caution When a user account is deleted, all data for that user is deleted after a grace period of 30 days, except for documents saved on SharePoint Online. Delete users only if you are certain that they won’t need that data in the future. For more information about deleted user accounts and how to restore them, see How to troubleshoot deleted user accounts in Office 365.
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Renew your organization’s subscription to resolve license conflicts
Most organizations choose to have their subscription to Office 365 renew automatically. You can turn off automatic renewal; however, if you do so, you will have a license conflict for every user and every service in that subscription when the subscription expires. To resolve this type of license conflict, the global admin or billing admin must renew your company’s subscription.
For more information about changing your automatic subscription renewal setting, see Change licenses or storage space for your subscription.
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