Microsoft 365: Restore User Data
Who can use this feature
Anyone with these permissions: Restore users
A user restore brings back a person’s whole working set, both mail and files, in one job. When a user account is wiped or a departing employee’s data is cleared too early, that job brings both back from a snapshot.
This article explains how to restore a Microsoft 365 user’s Exchange mailbox and OneDrive account together.
A restore job covers one user, so recovering several people means running the job once for each of them.
User data always restores to its original user, in the tenant it was backed up from. You can’t redirect it to a different user account or a different tenant.
A user restore handles OneDrive and the mailbox differently:
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OneDrive files: Overwrite whatever is at their original locations. To keep the files that are there, restore individual files instead.
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Mail: Imports as new into a folder named for the restore time, such as
Eon Restore 2026-07-20T08.22.23Z, preserving the original folder structure beneath it. Eon doesn’t merge it with mail that’s already there, so running the same restore twice leaves the user with two copies of every message.
Restore a user
You can find backed-up users and start a restore from the SaaS inventory.
Before you start
Before you restore a user, make sure:
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A Microsoft 365 restore tenant is connected for the tenant the user was backed up from.
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You’ve checked whether a previous restore of the same mailbox already ran, so you don’t leave the user with duplicate mail.
Select the snapshot and the user to restore
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In your SaaS inventory, open the Microsoft 365 tenant the user was backed up from.
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Navigate to Users in the side menu, and then select the user you want to restore.
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Click the snapshot date. You’ll see a calendar view with colored dots on the days when snapshots were taken. There can be more than one snapshot per day.
When you click a day, a list of Eon snapshots taken that day is displayed below the calendar.
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Select the snapshot you want to restore.
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Click Restore user.
Choose the restore tenant
Choose the Microsoft 365 restore tenant you want to restore to.
Only the tenant the user was backed up from is available.
Start the job and monitor it
Restoring a whole OneDrive account overwrites the user’s files at their original locations, and there’s no opt-out. The Restore Mode choice exists only on item-level restores. To keep the current files, restore the items you need individually into a new folder instead.
Click Restore, then track the job from View job, or from the Restore jobs tab on the Jobs page.
When the job completes, the user’s mail is in a new Eon Restore folder in their mailbox, and their OneDrive files are back at their original paths.
For how sharing permissions come back, see Microsoft 365: Restore OneDrive Data.