Microsoft 365 Limitations

Microsoft 365 protection has the following limitations depending on the service:

Teams

  • We do not support backup or restore of:
    • entities (messages/replies/attachments (of message/reply)) that are unavailable on Microsoft

      Entities will fail with an error message such as:

    • Microsoft Document Sensitivity Labelling. See Learn more about sensitivity labels
  • Only user accounts with Security Officer permissions can restore from deleted or unlicensed accounts
  • Only user accounts with Security Officer permissions can delete backup history for accounts

    See the User roles for full details on how this might affect you.

  • All private channels will be restored as public
  • Deleted channels will not be backed up
  • Guest users in the channels will not be restored in the channels

    Guest users must be added after the channel is restored.

  • It is not possible to configure settings for the General channel and as such will restore Microsoft's default settings
  • Group settings cannot be restored, Microsoft's default group settings will be applied on restored channels
  • If a Team is Archived prior to the recovery, it will restore in full and must be archived again manually
  • Tags and Apps in the Team will not be backed up

Exchange

  • We do not support backup or restore of:
    • Groups
    • Outlook Notes
    • Calendar events that have not been accepted by the recipient
    • Tasks
    • Contacts Attachments
    • Public folders

      This is due to the configuration of Microsoft data layers

    • Microsoft Document Sensitivity Labeling. See Learn more about sensitivity labels
  • We do not support hybrid Microsoft 365 installations for backup. On-premises mailboxes may be detected as connected to Microsoft 365 but we are unable to protect them as access is not given to the on-premises installation
  • We do not currently support delegated Microsoft 365 tenants. It’s required to grant permissions being logged in as administrator of original tenant
  • Only user accounts with Security Officer permissions can restore from deleted or unlicensed mailboxes
  • Only user accounts with Security Officer permissions can delete backup history for accounts

    See the User roles for full details on how this might affect you.

  • Colour categories will not be included in the backup and restore of Contacts
  • Protection for Archived mailboxes or a built-in Archive folder is not provided through backup
  • You cannot backup from unlicensed mailboxes. Please confirm that the mailbox does not fall under one of these scenarios:
    1. The mailbox is present, but the license was removed. In this case, it will not be possible to add the mailbox to the backup
    2. The mailbox and license were removed while the backup is in progress. In this case, the backup will not be able to complete and you will see the error "Unable to backup user without license" for such mailboxes
    3. The mailbox is removed before the backup is started. In this case, the backup will run but skip this mailbox

      4. To resolve this issue you will need to undelete the mailbox via the Microsoft 365 Admin portal and provide a license to the mailbox. After the backup is completed for the mailbox, you can then delete the mailbox and remove the license. We cannot backup deleted mailboxes, even if they have a license assigned.

OneDrive

  • We do not support backup and restore of:
  • Only user accounts with Security Officer permissions can restore from deleted or unlicensed accounts
  • Only user accounts with Security Officer permissions can delete backup history for accounts

    See the User roles for full details on how this might affect you.

  • Cove does not currently support backup or restore of OneNote folders. This means we cannot backup any OneNote data, as (by default) all OneNote pages are located in Folder notebooks.

  • Though OneDrive supports versioning, we only backup the latest version of files
  • You cannot backup from accounts that are not licensed or deleted
  • You cannot restore OneDrive items from the Trash folder (if the item was backed up before being moved to Trash, restore from the original location will be possible)
  • We do not currently support delegated Microsoft 365 tenants. It’s required to grant permissions being logged in as administrator of original tenant

SharePoint

  • We do not backup:
    • previous versions of files, only the current version
    • SharePoint lists
    • Loop pages
    • SharePoint pages, styles and images used to create the SharePoint site
    • Planners via SharePoint as these are a separate data source which is not detected during the Backup process
    • Wikis via SharePoint as these are a separate data source which is not detected during the Backup process
  • We do not support backup and restore:
  • We do not support delegated Microsoft 365 tenants. It’s required to grant permissions being logged in as administrator of original tenant

  • Cove does not currently support backup or restore of OneNote folders. This means we cannot backup any OneNote data, as (by default) all OneNote pages are located in Folder notebooks.

  • We cannot re-create a deleted site collection. If a site collection is deleted, it can be restored to a new location, which must be created manually

    A site collection includes the site within SharePoint, as well as a site's necessary structures (for instance, the site's Document Library).

  • Due to a SharePoint Online limitation, role definitions can only be restored in a root site (or site collection)

Custom Document Library

If you are using a custom document library (DL) within SharePoint and the below applies, files may be inaccessible and will not be backup:

  1. Enforce unique values is set to 'yes'
  2. Files are not checked in on SharePoint

To ensure all files are backed up when using a custom document library you must ensure:

  1. Enforce unique values is set to 'no'
  2. Files have been checked in on SharePoint to recognize changes