How to cancel Microsoft 365

On the web

1. Sign in at account.microsoft.com/services with the account that owns the subscription.
2. Find Microsoft 365 under Services & subscriptions and choose Manage, then Cancel subscription (or Upgrade or Cancel).
3. Read the page: it says whether you get a refund now or keep the subscription until the paid period ends. Choose I don’t want my subscription to proceed.
4. If the page instead shows Turn on recurring billing, recurring billing is already off and the subscription will simply expire.

If you bought it through Apple, Google Play or a retailer

1. Subscriptions started in the iOS or Android Microsoft 365 app are billed by the store: cancel in Apple’s Subscriptions or Google Play’s Subscriptions.
2. A one-year key from a retailer is not recurring at all. It just expires; turn off recurring billing on account.microsoft.com if you also added a card there.

Before you cancel

Notice period

None. You can cancel with a refund within 30 days of a charge, or turn off recurring billing and use it to the end of the paid period.

Refunds

The most recent recurring charge is refunded if you cancel within 30 days of it (once per subscription). For subscriptions bought in Germany since March 2022, a pro-rated refund of the unused time is available after the 30 days as well.

Worth knowing

• OneDrive drops to 5 GB when the subscription ends. Over that, you cannot upload or sync, and after six months over quota Microsoft may delete the OneDrive contents. Move files out first.
• Word, Excel and PowerPoint switch to read-only on the desktop; the free web versions keep working.
• A Family subscription is cancelled by the owner only. The others lose their benefits at the end of the period.

Your rights in the EU

Bought in Germany? Microsoft provides a cancellation form that does not need you to sign in, and since March 2022 the subscription can be ended monthly after the first year with a pro-rated refund.

These apply in most EU countries on top of whatever the service’s own terms say. The detail varies by country, so treat this as the floor, not the full picture.

• 14 days to change your mind. For most contracts you sign online you have 14 days to withdraw without giving a reason. For a digital service you start using straight away, the seller can ask you to give up that right at checkout, which is what the tick-box you clicked past was for, or charge you for the part you used.
• Auto-renewal has to be clear. A service that renews automatically has to tell you so before you sign up, including how long each renewal lasts and what it costs. Some countries go further: in Germany, a contract signed since March 2022 can only renew indefinitely if you can then cancel monthly, and notice periods are capped at one month. France, Austria, Romania and Sweden require a separate reminder before a renewal.
• A cancel button, in Germany. If you signed up online with a company selling in Germany, its website has to carry a clearly labelled cancellation button since July 2022, and cancelling has to be as easy as signing up was. Across the EU, an equivalent withdrawal function for the 14-day right became mandatory on 19 June 2026.
• Keep the confirmation. Cancel through the account page or the official form rather than by replying to a no-reply address, screenshot the confirmation, and keep the email. If a charge lands after that date, the confirmation is what gets it reversed.

Sources: European Consumer Centre Germany, Online subscriptions · Directive (EU) 2023/2673, withdrawal function from 19 June 2026

Questions