Microsoft Teams files keep going missing, but no one knows why

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Microsoft blames the recent outage but doesn’t offer any explanation

 

(Image credit: Shutterstock)

 

The recent Azure Active Directory (AAD) outage has had a strange side-effect; it’s being blamed for randomly deleting files from Microsoft SharePoint and Microsoft Teams.

 

A misconfiguration in AAD caused major headaches for users of various Microsoft’s collaboration platforms such as SharePoint, Teams, Office 365, XBox Live, and others. Microsoft soon rolled out a mitigation and everything was back to normal in a few hours.

 

Now reports are pouring in from SharePoint and Teams users about their files mysteriously ending up in the recycle bin, either in the online trash or surprisingly in the one on their desktop.

 

Ex-files

Several users have reported the strange behaviour in Microsoft’s community forums, as well as on Reddit and some admins even shared their experience with BleepingComputer, going back to as early as a day after AAD’s outage.

 

Microsoft has issued a couple of advisories regarding the issues, one for SharePoint and another for OneDrive. Reportedly, Microsoft blames the AAD outage as the cause of the issue without shedding any light on how the now resolved outage is responsible for this unexplained behaviour.  

 

Furthermore, BleepingComputer reports that while both advisories suggest that subsequent file sync will restore the deleted files, that didn’t work and users had to manually move them out of the recycle bin to their original location.

 

The issue reportedly also extends to the free users of Microsoft Teams, who’ve had their shared files also mysteriously disappear. Microsoft has apparently found the cause of the issue and said they were working on applying mitigations, though any explanation about the odd behaviour was conspicuous by its absence.

 

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