AI;DR: Starting from early July 2026, all associated data will be deleted 12 Months after a user license is removed.

That's a rather weird way of phrasing it. It almost suggested that you shouldn't audit your license needs.

Other than this was always the case, it's hard to see why data stored in a close account wouldn't get deleted.

I don't want to imagine how much mess they have in their backend, given that most Microsoft 365 products rely on SharePoint in one way or another. And then, sometimes you get a "peek" of what's happening behind the scenes (spurious folders, random files appearing, hidden libraries, etc...).

For enterprise companies, ones I've worked in at least, they will auto sync the users folder /c/Users/(name) with one drive, but there is some weird alternative they have to set on the windows system to actually use a workspace for the user.

So when I'm on site somewhere, and have no access to a network that's safe, I can't access files that are in my documents folder, pictures or desktop.. when I never asked OneDrive to lift and shift my days off my machine.

I've had the guys turn off one drive explicitly on my machine several times but it keeps reactivating itself as soon as I sign back into the AD.

They can't figure it out, I can't trust it, and the company pays for it.