How to Cancel Microsoft 365 Subscription Step by Step

This guide simplifies canceling Microsoft 365 subscriptions. It covers personal, business, and app store purchases, detailing steps for each. Understand potential refunds and crucial steps for different types. Critically, backup your M365 data before canceling to prevent permanent loss, especially for business accounts with no free tier.

Microsoft 365 has license holders worldwide. Countless people and businesses use the M365 suite of tools to perform all sorts of daily tasks. However, there can always arise situations where they no longer want to keep the Office 365 license. Soon end up asking queries like how to cancel the Microsoft 365 subscription.

It sounds simple (like hitting a cancel button). There comes the challenge: Microsoft tries its best to hide the cancel button, and even when you find it, getting a refund for an unused subscription is tough and confusing. Don’t worry, this guide will make the entire process simple. Let us start straight with the personal license removal process.

Learn How to Cancel Microsoft 365 Subscription for Private Accounts

Step 1. Sign in to your Microsoft 365 personal/family account.

Step 2. Tap “Manage” under your Microsoft 365 subscription. You can also go to the “Services & subscriptions” tab directly.

Step 3. Then, press the “Cancel subscription” option.

Step 4. After that, press the “I don’t want my subscription” option.

Step 5. You get a pop-up with two choices: one is “close the subscription right now”

and another saying “continue using it till the next billing cycle and terminate it thereafter”.

Step 6. Select one and click on “End Subscription”.

Step 7. You automatically redirect to the Services & subscription page, where you can see the subscription termination message.

Admins who handle licenses for multiple users need to perform slightly different steps. Let’s look at it.

Steps to End Microsoft 365 Business/Enterprise Subscription

Note that only the following M365 admin roles have the necessary permission set that are required to complete the cancellation process.

• Global Administrator
• Billing Administrator
• Billing Account Owner or Contributor

Step 1. Go to the M365 Admin Centre page and log in.

Step 2. From the scroll down on the home page, select the subscriptions tab.

Step 3. You see a list of currently active licenses. Tap the Cross icon (X) next to the license you are about to remove.

Step 4. This opens the Cancel subscription portal. Pick one out of:

• ‘Cancel Now‘(if prepaid).
• ‘Cancel on trial end date‘ (trial/recurring).
  

Step 4.1. If you chose ‘Cancel on trial end date‘:

• Go to the recurring bill menu.
• Change the setting to “Let this subscription expire“.
• Press Save (to avoid being charged).
  

• Confirm the change in the pop-up (click Yes).

Step 5. Return to the Cancellation portal.

Step 6. Select a reason for cancellation.

Step 7. Click Cancel.

Step 8 (Optional). Provide feedback.

Step 9. Press Done.

If you were still under trial status and have already blocked your payment, your job is done. Soon, the account will clear and become inaccessible for admins as well. For tasks like managing user access or deciding how to archive former employee mailboxes in Office 365, careful planning is needed before cancellation.

You may know that Microsoft allows third-party purchase of its licenses. This means you can subscribe to it via your Apple App Store or Google Play Store, too.

If you have taken this route, the steps to end the subscription change a bit. So, see carefully and apply accordingly.

How to Cancel the O365 Plan If You Got It Through an In-app Purchase

The cancellation must happen on an Apple device or through Apple’s systems.

• On an iPhone or iPad:
  • Open the Settings app.
  • Tap your name.
  • Tap Subscriptions.
  • Tap the Microsoft 365 subscription.
  • Tap Cancel Subscription. (If there’s no Cancel button or you see an expiration message in red text, the subscription is already cancelled.)
• On a Mac:
  • Open the App Store app.
  • Click your name in the sidebar. If you can’t find your name, click Sign In.
  • Click Account Settings.
  • Scroll to Subscriptions, then click Manage.
  • Next to the Microsoft 365 subscription, click Edit.
  • Click Cancel Subscription.

If you purchased your subscription through the Google Play Store (e.g., in-app purchase within an Office app on your Android device):

• Open the Google Play Store app on your Android device.
• At the top right, tap the profile icon.
• Tap Payments and subscriptions.
• Tap Subscriptions.
• Select the Microsoft 365 subscription you want to cancel.
• Tap Cancel subscription.
• Follow the on-screen instructions.

You can also manage Google Play subscriptions by going to play.google.com on a web browser.

• Sign in to play.google.com.
• Tap your profile icon
• Select Payments and subscriptions.
• Switch to the Subscription tab
• Select the Microsoft 365 subscription.
• Click Manage.
• Click Cancel subscription.
• Within the confirmation pop-up, click Yes.

Now that license removal is complete, the next question that users have is what happens to the refund. For that, there is no one single answer; getting a refund is dependent on multiple factors, like, for example, when exactly in your subscription cycle you stopped, and from where you got your subscription. Your licence type also plays a role in deciding how much money you get back.

See Quick Refund M365 License Cancellation Cheat Sheet

Account/Purchase Type	Cancellation Time	Likely Refund?
MCA (Microsoft Customer Agreement – often for Business via NCE)	Within 7 days (168 hours) of purchase/renewal (for new commerce experience – NCE)	Yes, often prorated
MCA (Microsoft Customer Agreement – often for Business via NCE)	After 7 days (168 hours) of purchase/renewal	Generally, no for the current term.
MOSA (Microsoft Online Subscription Agreement – Older direct Business/some Enterprise)	Varies significantly by specific agreement terms.	Can be Yes, prorated, but often requires support intervention.
Microsoft 365 Personal/Family (Direct from Microsoft website)	Within 30 days of initial purchase or auto-renewal.	Yes, often full or prorated.
Microsoft 365 Personal/Family (Direct from Microsoft website)	After 30 days of initial purchase or auto-renewal.	No for the current paid term.
ANY (Free Trial – Microsoft, Apple, Google)	Before the trial ends	N/A (no charge has been made yet)
3rd Party Reseller (e.g., CSP – Cloud Solution Provider, GoDaddy, etc.)	Varies by reseller	Varies entirely by reseller.
Apple App Store Purchase (for Microsoft 365)	Request to Apple, typically within 14-60 days (can vary)	Case-by-case, decided by Apple.
Google Play Store Purchase (for Microsoft 365)	Request to Google Play within 48 hours. After 48 hours, you can try Google Support or the developer.	More likely if within 48 hours. Case-by-case after.

For the most accurate and up-to-date information, please refer to the official Microsoft Terms of Sale and Refund Policies:

• Microsoft Terms of Sale
• Microsoft Refund Policy

Don’t Cancel Microsoft 365 Subscription Without Making Backups

Any license revocation must be done only after all data has been successfully secured. Preferably offline or into another cloud interface(possibly the one you are transitioning into).

To do that, you have many manual methods, downloading emails one at a time, which this free but time-consuming, a factor that may end up costing you more than any premium tool.

So the safe way out is to use a trusted utility known to do the backup job well and deliver on time results. Which is none other than the SysTools Office 365 Backup Tool. Available on both Windows and Mac.

This 100% GUI platform gives options to do user and admin-level backups. This tool is applicable when you are an admin/user involved in closing M365 business licenses. Consider exploring Microsoft Teams security best practices if your organization relies heavily on Teams before making any changes.

Moreover, even if you are an individual account holder who just unsubscribed to a personal license, you can use the sister tool set of either the Hotmail Backup software or the Outlook Backup Software.

Personal account holders must know that ending the subscription does not delete their account. Instead, they switch to the free tier. This has way less storage allocation, and if you don’t remove the items, you risk losing most of your data permanently. Plus, as the Outlook email service shares the same storage, not having enough space means email communication stops. In some cases, users report issues where their shared calendar could not be updated after such changes.

For business/Enterprise subscribers, the situation is even more bleak, making backups even more important. Lack of a free tier means that after a period of time (90 days), Microsoft permanently deletes all of the data that was on the cloud. Leaving no way to recover it. It’s also a good time to review how your organization uses features like SharePoint, perhaps by learning how to create a knowledge base in SharePoint for future reference.

Conclusion

Here we taught users how to cancel a Microsoft 365 subscription step by step. With this, users now know the process of everything from personal/family account license removal and enterprise-level bulk subscription clearing to disabling subscriptions purchased from the App Store or the Play Store. Moreover, at the time of deleting licenses, it is critical to safeguard the data, for which readers can choose any of the available solution that fits their situation.