Member Avatar for gabrielthomass

To start I want to make it clear I have no experiance with office 365 or the associated exhange stuff, and I would never personally recomend such a package to my clients, hence why I am totally in the dark about this.

I have taken on the management of IT for a small buiness and have been tasked with migrating away from office 365 software to get costs down.

There were 15 computers and each had an email address and access to the microsoft 365 software suite. So far I have changed all the accounts onto an "exchange only" plan, removed office 365 from all machines, and migrated to stand alone versions of MS office. Which is great, saving them lots of money on subscriptions already.

The exchange only licences have come via a reseller purchased by the previous IT technician. It appears the company has been paying the technician and he has been purchacing them from the reseller.

There has been some disputes between the company and the technician and he has threatened to hit the kill switch on the 365 licenses and seriously throw a spanner into the works. So we want to migrate away from the reseller and regain full control of the licenses (on the down-low if at all possible.)

So basically my question is; can we descreetly remove our relationship with the reseller on the office 365 admin account from our end, while either maintaining the existing licenses, or purchase new licenses from MS directly without loosing any of the configuration or data currently held in the exchange mailboxes!

It is my understanding the reseller relationship can be deleted in partner relationships, only it doesnt give me an option to delete. Also I believe if I could delete it, it would then take all the licenses with it and we would loose the mailboxes?

Should I perhaps purchase all the new licenses and then assign them to each user before breaking the reseller relationship? and is it possible to switch these licenses without losing the mailboxes? It is my understanding that if a user is reverted to unlicensed then the mailbox gets removed?

Any advice will be greatly appricated.

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by rproffitt

Dani AI

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Practical, low‑risk checklist and next steps for a tenant where a third party handles licensing (addresses ’s concern)

If a third party has been buying or managing subscriptions for your tenant the immediate priority is to protect data and regain administrative control — don’t rush to remove the partner until you have fallbacks in place.

  • Confirm and document who has Global Admin on the Microsoft 365 tenant and that the organisation controls the verified domains (DNS). If you are not a Global Admin, contact Microsoft support with proof of domain ownership to re-establish control.
  • Back up mailboxes now. Use an Exchange eDiscovery export or a reliable third‑party mailbox backup. Do not rely on service retention windows as your only safeguard.
  • Put critical mailboxes on retention/litigation hold if preserving content is required while you change licensing (this prevents permanent deletion during the transition). Verify any hold requirements against the replacement license you plan to buy.
  • Buy replacement licenses (Microsoft direct or a new CSP) and assign them to users on the same tenant before removing old subscriptions or the partner relationship. Test the change with one pilot account to ensure mail, calendar, and mobile access remain intact.
  • After verification, remove the reseller’s delegated admin or change the partner relationship from the Admin Center. If the portal won’t let you, escalate to Microsoft support — they can assist when the tenant owner provides proof. Keep all invoices and written authorisations.
  • If the reseller resists or threatens service interruption, don’t try to “work around” legal ownership — escalate to Microsoft and, if needed, legal counsel.

Ignore off‑topic accusations (e.g. ); focus on regaining control, backing up data, and performing a tested, licence‑swap on the tenant so there’s no unlicensed gap.

Member Avatar for rproffitt

I don't believe you. This was spammed before and here you are again.
theblogpros.com/2019/01/16/office-365-license-migration-advice/ has the same text and you took no pains to alter it.
It was also posted with same text on Daniweb.

You appear to be a shill or spammer. Change my mind.

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