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User report

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Overview

The User report lists every licensed user in a tenant with their account status, last activity, licenses, monthly cost, and the number of licenses that come from a Microsoft Entra ID group. It is written for the people who approve license removals. Use it to find licenses that nobody is using and to see what they cost.

You switch the report on, schedule it, and choose who receives it the same way as the other reports. See Reports in Tenant Manager.

Business value

Approvers get one list of licensed users with the inactive users at the top. They can see what each user's licenses cost and decide which ones to remove. Because the report arrives on a schedule, the review does not depend on someone remembering to open Tenant Manager.

Prerequisites

Before you use the report, connect a tenant and wait for its first sync to finish. The report uses the data from the last sync.

Required permissions

You need Read on Reports to see the report and its Generation history. You need Manage on Reports to generate the report on demand or change its schedule. For details, see Roles and permissions in Tenant Manager.

Role Access
Owner, Contributor Read and Manage on Reports.
Reader Read on Reports only.
Custom role Whatever the role's Read and Manage switches for Reports allow.

Dependencies

  • Synced data: the report uses the data from the last sync. See How data sync works.
  • Prices: the monthly cost of each user's licenses uses prices from your Microsoft billing or from the Global price catalog. See Global price catalog.
  • Sign-in and usage data: Last activity and Inactive depend on the tenant's app registration having the AuditLog.Read.All permission for sign-in activity and the Reports.Read.All permission, with admin consent, for usage reports. Without them, the sync reports that sign-in activity or usage reports could not be read.
  • Entra ID P1: last activity is more complete when the tenant has Microsoft Entra ID P1. See How it works.

How it works

The User report has one row for each licensed user. In the PDF, the rows follow a summary page. In the Excel file, the rows are the only content. The report has these columns.

Column What it shows
User The user's display name.
Email The user's email address.
Account status Enabled or Disabled.
Last activity The date of the user's most recent sign-in or Microsoft 365 workload use, for example 12 Oct 2026. A background sign-in counts only when no usage data covers the user.
Inactive Yes or No: whether the user counts as inactive.
Licenses The paid and trial licenses assigned to the user.
Monthly cost The unit prices of the user's paid licenses added up. It reads a dash when none of them has a price. When only some do, the cell says how many are not priced, for example "(1 not priced)".
Licenses by group How many of the user's licenses come from a Microsoft Entra ID group instead of being assigned directly, for example "1 of 2". It reads "None" when all of them are assigned directly.

A user is inactive when the account is disabled, or when the user has had no activity in the last N days. N is the No activity for more than (days) setting of the report, and the default is 90. A user who was created within that window and has never signed in is not inactive yet. For how Tenant Manager judges activity, see Recommendations and savings.

No activity for more than (days) is under Report settings in the Configure dialog of the report. The field tooltip says that the User report uses it for the Inactive column. The activity window in the report file reads "Last N days".

The report lists inactive users first. Within each group, users are ordered by monthly cost, highest first. The summary page of the PDF shows four figures: Licensed users, Inactive users, Unused spend per month, and Cost of assigned seats per month. In Generation history, the Details column gives a one-line summary of the run, for example "412 users - 380 enabled, 32 disabled, 58 inactive (14.1%)".

Without Entra ID P1, the last activity in this report comes from Microsoft 365 usage reports, which record only email, Teams, SharePoint, and OneDrive use. These reports can miss activity, so the report may show more unused licenses than there are. The Configure dialog always shows a note for the User report. When every tenant has Entra ID P1, the note explains that last activity is the latest interactive sign-in or use of email, Teams, SharePoint or OneDrive. When a tenant has no Entra ID P1, the note names the tenants that lack it.

Steps

The steps below generate the report and open the file. You start on the Reports page of the tenant. To change the schedule, format, or recipients, see Reports in Tenant Manager.

Generate and read the User report

This procedure creates a copy of the report on demand and opens it.

  1. Select the tenant in the tree view, expand License management, and select Reports.
  2. On the User report row, make sure the switch is on. Open the actions menu and select Generate now.
  3. Open the actions menu again and select Generation history.
  4. When the run shows Succeeded, select Download in the File column.
  5. Open the file. In the PDF, start with the Report summary page. In the Excel file, use the filters on the Rows sheet to narrow the list, for example to inactive users.

Change the activity window

This procedure sets how many days without activity make a user inactive in the report.

  1. On the User report row, open the actions menu and select Configure.
  2. In No activity for more than (days), enter the number of days. The default is 90.
  3. Select Save.

Example scenario

The licensing team at Summit Peak Outfitters reviews unused licenses at the start of each month. Nadia Haddad, a module owner, configures the User report for the Summit Peak Retail tenant to run monthly on the 2nd at 09:00, as an Excel file, and sends it to licensing@summitpeakoutfitters.com.

On the 2nd, the run's Details read "412 users - 380 enabled, 32 disabled, 58 inactive (14.1%)". The team opens the file, filters the Inactive column, and passes the 58 users to the license approvers. The approvers use the monthly cost to start with the most expensive licenses.

Limitations

  • The report covers one tenant at a time. Tenant groups have no User report.
  • The report lists licensed users only.
  • The activity window is the No activity for more than (days) setting of the report. The default is 90 days.
  • Without Entra ID P1, the report can show more inactive users than there are.
  • The report is read-only. It does not remove licenses.

Troubleshooting

  1. The report shows more inactive users than I expect.
    Cause: the tenant has no Entra ID P1, so last activity comes from Microsoft 365 usage reports that can miss activity. A low No activity for more than (days) value also marks more users as inactive.
    Fix: check the user in Explore users before you ask for a removal, and check the No activity for more than (days) value.

  2. A new user is not marked inactive, although they have never signed in.
    Cause: a user created within the number of days set in No activity for more than (days) who has never signed in does not count as inactive yet.
    Fix: wait until the window has passed, or review the user in Explore users.

  3. Monthly cost shows "not priced" or a dash.
    Cause: Tenant Manager has no price for one or more of the user's licenses. Billed prices exist only for tenants on a Microsoft Customer Agreement. For other tenants, only a custom price from the Global price catalog is used.
    Fix: set a custom price in the Global price catalog, and then generate the report again. See Global price catalog.

  4. The run shows Abandoned.
    Cause: the sync of the tenant was failing when the report ran.
    Fix: fix the sync, and then generate the report again. See Reports in Tenant Manager.

FAQs

  1. What counts as inactive in the User report?
    A user is inactive when the account is disabled or has had no activity in the last N days, where N is No activity for more than (days). The default is 90. Users created within that window who never signed in are not counted.

  2. Can I change the 90-day window?
    Yes. Change No activity for more than (days) in the Configure dialog of the report.

  3. Does the report remove licenses?
    No. It only lists them. To act on a finding, use the recommendations and tasks in Optimization. See User recommendations.

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