Veeam Backup for Office 365 - Your license limit has been exceeded

How to fix Veaam Backup for Office 365 error "Your license limit has been exceeded by n users. Users exceeding the license count will not be processed". PowerShell commands to check Veeam license usage and remove licensed users. 

In this example, we're using Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 5.0 Community Edition. And we've backed up more users than our license allows, so any users that exceed the license limit will not be backed up.

We can either remove users from the backup job and wait for 31 days for the license to be automatically revoked, or we can use Veeam PowerShell to remove the user's data from the backup repository and then remove the license.

Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 - Licensing and License Types
https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/vbo365/guide/vbo_licensing.html

The Veeam license is consumed by objects (mailboxes, OneDrive for Business accounts, SharePoint personal sites) for which at least one restore point has been created within the last 31 days. If an object was not backed up for 31 days, its license is automatically revoked.

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Check Veeam license usage

Menu - License

We've used 20 licenses and Veeam backup for Office 365 Community edition only allows 10 so we will need to remove old users to free up some licenses

Check license usage using Veeam PowerShell

Open Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 PowerShell

List all licensed users using Get-VBOLicensedUser

# Get Veeam backup organization and save as a variable
$org = Get-VBOOrganization -Name "YOURDOMAIN.onmicrosoft.com"
# List all licensed users in the organization
Get-VBOLicensedUser -Organization $org 

The output will show you each licensed user and which users have exceeded the license limit

Remove users data from the backup repository

You'll need to remove the user's data from the backup repository before you can remove the license. If you try to run Remove-VBOLicensedUser without first removing the user's backup data you'll get this error

Remove-VBOLicensedUser : Failed to revoke user license. User data found in the repository: Office 365 Backups.

The Remove-VBOEntityData Veeam PowerShell command will remove all of the user's data from the backup repository - email, email archive, OneDrive and Sharepoint personal sites

# Get Veeam backup organization and save as a variable
$repository = Get-VBORepository -Name "REPOSITORY NAME"
# Get a licensed user name and save as a variable
$user = Get-VBOEntityData -Type User -Repository $repository -Name "FIRSTNAME LASTNAME"
# Remove users data from the repository
Remove-VBOEntityData -Repository $repository -User $user -Mailbox -ArchiveMailbox -OneDrive -Sites 

 

Remove a licensed user using Veeam PowerShell

# Get Veeam backup organization and save as a variable
$org = Get-VBOOrganization -Name "YOURDOMAIN.onmicrosoft.com"
# Get a licensed user name and save as a variable
$licensedUser = Get-VBOLicensedUser -Organization $org -Name "FIRSTNAME LASTNAME"
# Remove the licensed user
Remove-VBOLicensedUser -User $licensedUser 

Remove-VBOLicensedUser : Cannot bind argument to parameter 'User' because it is null

This error is because the -Name parameter is incorrect. In most cases, it should be the user's Office 365 display name "Firstname Lastname". However, if the display name doesn't work, try the user's email address "user@yourdomain.com" instead

Even though the output of the Get-VBOLicensedUser command shows the users email address under UserName, in most cases the command Remove-VBOLicensedUser doesn't work unless you use the user's Office 365 display name.

This article in the Veam help center also shows using Get-VBOLicensedUser with the user's email address which doesn't seem to work most of the time….

https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/vbo365/powershell/remove-vbolicenseduser.html

References:

Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 - User Guide

Licensing and License Types
https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/vbo365/guide/vbo_licensing.html

Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 5.0 - PowerShell Reference

Get-VBOOrganizationUser
https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/vbo365/powershell/get-vboorganizationuser.html

Remove-VBOEntityData
https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/vbo365/powershell/remove-vboentitydata.html

Remove-VBOLicensedUser
https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/vbo365/powershell/remove-vbolicenseduser.html

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