Microsoft partially reverses downgrades OneDrive storage capacity

Microsoft is partially reversing the cloud storage limitations of its OneDrive accounts. Among other things, the company gives users the option to avoid the downgrade from 15 to 5GB on free accounts if they request it on a special webpage.

On Microsoft’s OneDrive Uservoice page, following the announcement of the downgrade in November, the request to reverse this decision has emerged as the most popular post on the site to date. More than 72,000 users agreed with the message, titled “I suggest you give us our storage back.” Microsoft decided last month to change Office 365 users’ unlimited OneDrive storage to 1TB with effect from early 2016, the free OneDrive accounts would go from 15GB to 5GB, the free 15GB bonus for using Camera Roll disappeared and several paid subscriptions gone.

Microsoft gave the motivation for the decision in November that the company is making the cloud storage available with the aim of facilitating the use of cloud applications such as Office 365 and not simply providing backup storage space in the cloud.

Douglas Pearce, Group Program Manager at Microsoft, responded to the request. He apologizes on behalf of the Redmond company and says any Office 365 user who isn’t happy with the decision to move from unlimited storage to 1TB can get their money back. Office 365 users who use more than 1TB of storage can continue to use this space until the end of 2016, after which they will go to 1TB.

Users with free accounts that go from 15 to 5 GB can indicate on a specially set up page until January 31, 2016 that they do not find the downgrade desirable. With that, they also keep the extra 15GB they got if they turned on the automatic upload of photos and videos. Users who do not use more than 5GB of storage can also indicate that they prefer 15GB of storage. The Camera Roll bonus no longer applies and can only be kept if users already have it. Users who do not visit Microsoft’s page in time or create an account after January 31 will still have a maximum of 5GB of cloud storage space.