How to Restore a Deleted Office 365 Groups using PowerShell?

Step-by-step pointers below:

• Step #1 Install the latest PowerShell version
• Step #2 Restore the deleted  Office 365 group
• Limitations
• How CloudAlly can help?

Consider that you have a SharePoint group MarketingO365

This group is used to grant permissions to members of Marketing O365 Members to a team site with important marketing data

Uh-oh! Someone accidentally deletes the group. How do you restore the group? Either by using the Exchange admin center or by using PowerShell. Here we will detail how to restore a group using PowerShell. Note that you must have Office 365 global administrator permissions or be a former owner of the deleted Office 365 group.

Step #1 Install the latest PowerShell version

For starters, it is mandatory to install the latest preview version of Azure Active Directory PowerShell for Graph. To do that, open Windows PowerShell as an Administrator 

Review installed modules using the command:

Get-InstalledModule -Name "AzureAD*"

If you have not installed the Azure PowerShell then you will get this message:

If you have an older version of AzureAD PowerShell it is better to uninstall it and then install the new version.

To uninstall AzureAD run the command:

Uninstall-Module AzureADPreview

Or

Uninstall-Module AzureAD

To install the Azure PowerShell run the command

Install-Module AzureADPreview

Input Y to confirm install from an untrusted source.

Wait for the module to install

Step #2 Restore a deleted  Office 365 Group

Open the Windows PowerShell you’ve just installed with Administrator privileges

Run the command:

Import-Module AzureADPreview

Then connect to your Office 365 tenant

Connect-AzureAD

You will be asked to enter your Office 365 administrator account details

You will then receive a message with the connection details

To get a list of deleted groups run the command

Get-AzureADMSDeletedGroup

Enter the group ID you wish to restore:

Restore-AzureADMSDeletedDirectoryObject -Id 

And voila! The group will be accessible in the Office 365 admin center and on SharePoint

For further information, see the Microsoft help center. Note, that restoring the group will restore all related objects:

• Azure Active Directory (AD) Office 365 groups object properties and members
• Group e-mail
• Common Exchange Inbox
• SharePoint Online team site and files
• OneNote notebook
• Planner
• Teams
• Yammer group and group content (If the Office 365 group was created from Yammer)

Limitations

Only Office 365 groups can be restored; security groups are permanently deleted and cannot be restored. A quick tip: even with planned group deletions, use the Remove-AzureADMSGroup command to soft delete Office 365 groups. However, even a soft-deleted group is stored only for 30 days, after this period the group is deleted permanently. 

A deleted group can cause considerable disturbance to your business processes and workflows. The same holds true for deleted emails, OneDrive files, SharePoint sites, etc. Apart from accidental or malicious deletion, you can also suffer Office 365 data loss due to malware attacks that are getting more ingenious and malicious by the day.

As the IT Admin, the onus for protecting the data rests with you. Mitigate the risk of a data breach with a dependable Office 365 backup and recovery solution – the most efficient way to recover data quickly and seamlessly.

How CloudAlly can help

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