Share via

Acceptable Use Policy violation on Microsoft 365 E5 Developer sandbox tenant

Bruno Vo 10 Reputation points
2026-03-27T04:35:36.39+00:00

My Microsoft 365 E5 Developer sandbox tenant has been flagged for an Acceptable Use Policy violation.

Banner in admin center:

"Your organization's use of Microsoft 365 has been identified as a violation of the Acceptable Use Policy in the Product Terms. The subscription will be deactivated on April 14, 2026 and all SharePoint and OneDrive content will be blocked."

Impact: all SharePoint sites and my OneDrive are read-only. I can only view and download, not upload/edit/delete.

This tenant is only for dev and learning (Power Apps, Power Automate, SharePoint APIs, .NET). No production users and no bulk email/spam.

Possible cause: I stored some university textbooks in PDF form in OneDrive (e.g. "Elementary Statistics 11th Edition – Mario F. Triola", "A First Course in Probability"). I now understand these are copyrighted materials. Because of the read-only lock I cannot delete them myself.

Request:

  • Please involve Microsoft staff to check what activity triggered the AUP enforcement.
  • If it is due to the textbook PDFs, please advise if the tenant can be unlocked or at least allow me to clean up the content.

Thank you.

Microsoft 365 and Office | Development | Microsoft 365 Developer Program
0 comments

1 answer

Sort by: Most helpful
Most helpful Newest Oldest
  1. Teddie-D 14,070 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator
    2026-03-27T05:18:38.9566667+00:00

    Hi @Bruno Vo

    Based on your description, the message shown in the Microsoft 365 Admin Center indicates that your tenant has been flagged for a potential violation of the Microsoft Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) as defined in the Product Terms. As a result, services such as SharePoint Online and OneDrive have been placed in a restricted (read‑only) state and are scheduled for deactivation on April 14, 2026.

    AUP enforcement actions are typically triggered by automated detection systems and reviewed by a specialized internal team. Forum moderators do not have visibility into the specific trigger and cannot override these restrictions.

    Storing copyrighted materials such as university textbooks in OneDrive may have contributed to the enforcement; however, the exact cause can only be confirmed through Microsoft’s internal review.

    Since this cannot be resolved through the forum, the appropriate next step is to submit a support request. To do this, select Contact support on the SharePoint Acceptable Use Policy page in the Microsoft 365 admin center, which can route the case to the responsible enforcement team for review and guidance on remediation.

    Reference: This Page Has Been Blocked as it Violates the Acceptable Use Policy - SharePoint | Microsoft Learn.

    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. 

Your answer

Answers can be marked as 'Accepted' by the question author and 'Recommended' by moderators, which helps users know the answer solved the author's problem.