Perform an Office 365 Remote Wipe On Your Phone

The ability to perform an Office 365 remote wipe on your phone or tablet is a vital part of security to any organization, large or small, that uses Office 365. As smartphones become smarter and smarter, it becomes easier to access more and more of your data on the go. While this is hugely convenient and often allows for higher productivity while traveling, it comes with security risks as well. The more company data, accounts, and passwords a phone holds, the more damaging it can be if it is lost or stolen.

While this isn’t the point of the article, I should mention that my top recommendation is to make sure you put some sort of password on your phone so that it cannot be easily unlocked by anyone who picks it up off the street. Next, there are many apps and products out there that allow for remote wiping of a phone, though many of them carry a cost or monthly subscription fee. Luckily Office 365 includes the ability to completely wipe a phone of all data if the phone is linked to Office 365 using Exchange Activesync.

Warning: Wiping your phone from Office 365 will wipe the entire phone and its SD card (if it has one), not just the email, so make sure you really want to do it before you run the wipe. Instructions are below:

1. Go to mail.office365.com and sign in with the account linked to the phone that you want to wipe
2. In the top right hand corner, go to Options –> See All Options
3. From there, on the left hand side of the page click “Phone”
4. Here you will land on the “mobile phones” page. This page displays all the mobile devices (phone, tablets, etc) that you have linked. You can view the details on each phone, as well as see when it last synced and other information about it.
5. To wipe the phone, select the phone you want (if you have multiple, make sure you select the right phone for obvious reasons) then click the “wipe device” button.
6. A warning screen will display, as it should, so go ahead and click the “Yes” button to run the wipe.
7. Once the device is done wiping, remove it from the list of devices just to be safe.
8. Go get a replacement phone, since if you have to remotely wipe your phone then there’s a 90% chance you’re going to be needing a new one

Alternative route for administrators:

As an administrator you might need to be the one wiping a phone. To do so, the instructions are very similar with a few adjustments.

1. Go to mail.office365.com and sign in with administrator credentials
2. Under “Admin Overview”, click the “Manage” button for exchange
3. This will take you to the management page. At the top it will say “Mail -> Options: Manage My Organization”. Drop this box down and select “Another User…”
4. Here it will pop up a box with the list of users. Choose the one with the phone you would like to wipe. And hit “Okay”. It will now take you to the user’s management page.
5. From there, on the left hand side of the page click “Phone”
6. Here you will land on the “mobile phones” page. This page displays all the mobile devices (phone, tablets, etc) that you have linked. You can view the details on each phone, as well as see when it last synced and other information about it.
7. To wipe the phone, select the phone you want (if you have multiple, make sure you select the right phone for obvious reasons) then click the “wipe device” button.
8. A warning screen will display, as it should, so go ahead and click the “Yes” button to run the wipe.
9. Once the device is done wiping, remove it from the list of devices just to be safe.

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