Deactivated and inactive mailboxes in NinjaOne SaaS Backup

What deactivate does

In NinjaOne SaaS Backup, deactivating a mailbox is the alternative to deleting it. NinjaOne's help centre says that when a mailbox is deactivated, its backup stops, the user's login access is disabled, and the previously backed-up data is retained. Deleting is different: when a mailbox is deleted, the backed-up data is purged.

On the Archiver plan the rule is stricter. NinjaOne's End-User Portal FAQ says archived mailboxes cannot be deleted in the portal, only deactivated; deleting archived data is a manual request to NinjaOne support. Once an archive mailbox is deactivated:

• It does not archive any new email
• Only administrators can access it, and the user's own access is switched off
• The mail already archived stays in place under your retention policies
• It can be reactivated later if the account comes back into use

That makes deactivation the normal way to handle a leaver: their mail stays searchable for eDiscovery and subject access requests, without the archive continuing to collect mail for an account nobody uses.

Inactive, Deactivated and empty: the statuses explained

The portal shows several states, and they are easy to confuse.

NinjaOne's portal colour-codes these: orange for an inactive mailbox that was deactivated, grey for an inactive mailbox with no data on the Microsoft 365 side. Backup errors are different again: NinjaOne retries them automatically, and the backup only stops when a mailbox is deactivated or inactive.

Note the clash of terms with Microsoft. In Microsoft 365, an inactive mailbox is a mailbox kept after the user account is deleted because a hold or retention policy applied to it. That is a Microsoft feature inside your tenant, and it is separate from NinjaOne's Inactive status. Our former employee mailbox guide covers both.

The deactivated seat allowance

Deactivated mailboxes do not all count against your licences. NinjaOne's help centre article "Deactivated Mailbox Threshold" says that, of the total purchased seats, 20% can be deactivated without using the organisation's licence.

NinjaOne's own example: if an organisation buys 10 seats, it can keep 2 mailboxes in Deactivated status without using a licence. Deactivate more than that, and the extra mailboxes use licences. Seat usage is shown on the End-User Portal dashboard and on the organisation's details page.

Two related features affect the count:

• Auto-licensing adjusts the seat count up or down as mailboxes are added to or removed from backup
• Autodiscover scans the tenant once a day and adds new users, with an exclusion list for accounts you leave out

Allowances like this can change, and how leavers count depends on your bundle, seat numbers and retention. We confirm how leavers count towards seats and retention when we quote, so the numbers match your staff turnover rather than an example.

Handling a leaver step by step

A typical leaver process for an organisation using Archiver looks like this:

1. Check whether the leaver's mail is subject to a legal hold, a dispute or a regulatory retention period before anything is removed
2. Make sure the mailbox has been captured: on Archiver, journaling has copied mail since the account was added, and the initial backup took existing mail
3. Agree who needs access to the leaver's mail (a manager, HR or compliance) and grant it through roles rather than by sharing a password
4. Remove the user's licence or account in Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace in line with your process; NinjaOne then shows the mailbox as Inactive or deactivates it
5. Deactivate the mailbox in the End-User Portal if it was not deactivated automatically, so the user's login is disabled
6. Let your retention policy govern how long the archived mail is kept, and record the decision

The order matters on the platform side. NinjaOne says its backups preserve data through offboarding and account changes, but only mail captured before the account goes can be kept. Microsoft keeps a deleted user's mailbox for 30 days unless a hold or retention policy makes it an inactive mailbox, and Google warns that if you delete a user or a required licence, their data might be irreversibly purged and no longer available to Vault. Capture first, then remove.

Privacy, access and HR points

A leaver's mailbox holds personal data about them and about everyone they wrote to, so access needs a reason and a record.

• Keep it under your retention policy, and delete it when the period ends; UK GDPR's storage limitation principle applies to archives too (see email retention and UK GDPR)
• Give access through compliance roles, so searches are logged in the audit log, rather than reopening the account
• Use eDiscovery with a Data Protection Officer review when you search a leaver's mail for a dispute or request
• Tell staff in your policies that business email is retained and may be searched after they leave

This is general information, not legal advice; take advice on employment or data protection questions specific to your organisation.

How Forever Systems helps with leavers

We set up NinjaOne Archiver so that leavers are a routine step rather than a scramble. That means agreeing the leaver process with you, mapping it to roles and retention policies, checking how deactivated seats and auto-licensing will affect your licence count, and showing your administrators how to deactivate and, if needed, reactivate mailboxes.

Contact us to talk about archiving leavers' mailboxes. For the product overview, see NinjaOne Archiver; for set-up detail, how Archiver is set up.