OneDrive restore lists inactive users

[sumeet]

Hello all,

I do not run many restores, but for a restore for a client in OneDrive with v8.4 and v8.5, what I have observed is that when I open the latest restore point (13th Aug 2026), users who have been decommissioned 3 or 4 years ago.
I checked the latest backup report and these users are not listed in them.
I have tested with and without checking the box in the restore window - which says list all deleted items or all versions of the item.

What I'm confused is why the users who are no longer active, get listed in the latest restore point.
Shouldn't the latest restore point list only the users who are active on that backup date? Why lists the users that got decommission or removed from M365 many years or months ago?
I would expect only the user that are listed in the backup report, to be listed in the restore point.

Has anyone else observed this behavior? I have checked across two different M365 setups

[Bjoern_ch]

Yes, this is expected behaviour.
What you see is a cumulative view.
When loading latest restore point for every object in your repos which is inside your retention (not deleted by retention) you see the latest (available) restore point.

In my opinion this is quite nice. Otherwise it would become pretty difficult to search for objects which were deleted some time ago.

[Polina]

Thanks Bjoern - your described it perfectly )

I can only add that the 'show deleted items' checkbox works on the item-level, not object-level, meaning that it controls which items (emails, files, etc) will be displayed and not objects (mailboxes, OneDrives, sites, etc.)

[sumeet]

Hi,

I understand that it is a lot easy to list all inactive users (who are available in the retention), but for the users who are from an older restore point, should a date next to their name get listed, showing the date of the restore point their data is from.
Will this not make it easy to understand all the users who are from older restore points.

The issue that we are running into is when our client ask us for a restore for a inactive user, opening the latest restore point lists the inactive user, but if we want the data few weeks before the one drive was inactive, not sure how to know when the one drive got inactive, without going through the backup reports to find the user active.
If the date get listed next to the user, if the user is from a older restore point, makes it a lot easier.
Or not list the user itself if not a active user (my first msg)

Does this make sense?