What Does SharePoint admin center Mean?
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Quick Definition
The SharePoint admin center is a web-based dashboard for IT admins to manage SharePoint Online. It lets you create and delete sites, assign permissions, control storage limits, and monitor activity. You can also set external sharing policies and manage site collections from one central place. Think of it as the command center for all SharePoint settings in your organization.
Commonly Confused With
The Microsoft 365 admin center is the main portal for managing all Microsoft 365 services, including user accounts, billing, and overall tenant health. The SharePoint admin center is a specialized section within it that focuses specifically on SharePoint Online. You go to the Microsoft 365 admin center for user licensing, but to the SharePoint admin center for site settings.
To add a new user license, use the Microsoft 365 admin center. To change a site’s storage quota, use the SharePoint admin center.
The OneDrive admin center manages user-specific OneDrive for Business storage, such as sync settings, storage limits for individual users, and sharing policies for personal drives. The SharePoint admin center manages team and communication sites that are shared among groups. They are separate because OneDrive is personal, while SharePoint is collaborative.
To restrict a user’s personal OneDrive storage, use the OneDrive admin center. To set storage for a project team site, use the SharePoint admin center.
SharePoint Central Administration is the management interface for SharePoint Server installed on your own servers. It is installed as a web application on the server farm. The SharePoint admin center is a cloud-based portal for SharePoint Online. They have different URLs, different settings, and different upgrade paths.
To configure a service application in an on-premises farm, use SharePoint Central Administration. To change external sharing for a cloud tenant, use the SharePoint admin center at admin.microsoft.com.
Microsoft previously offered a “classic” version of the SharePoint admin center with an older interface. While some settings are still accessible there, Microsoft is moving all management to the modern admin center. The classic center lacks features like storage metrics and advanced analytics.
If you need to see detailed usage reports for a site, use the modern SharePoint admin center. The classic version may only show basic site lists.
Must Know for Exams
The SharePoint admin center is a recurring topic in Microsoft 365 certification exams, particularly MS-100 (Microsoft 365 Identity and Services), MS-101 (Microsoft 365 Mobility and Security), and MS-700 (Managing Microsoft Teams). These exams test your ability to manage user experiences, configure security policies, and maintain a healthy Microsoft 365 tenant. The SharePoint admin center is a central tool for all of these tasks, so exam questions often ask about its features, settings, and best practices.
In the MS-100 exam, which covers tenant management, you may be asked to describe how to manage SharePoint site creation. For example, a question might present a scenario where users are creating too many abandoned sites, and you need to restrict site creation to a specific security group. The correct answer would involve using the SharePoint admin center to manage the “Site creation” setting under “Settings.” Another question might ask about storage limits: “You need to ensure that the Marketing department cannot exceed 100 GB of SharePoint storage.” The solution is to navigate to the admin center, select the Marketing site, and set a storage quota.
In the MS-101 exam, which focuses on security and compliance, external sharing settings are heavily tested. A common question pattern: “Your company has a policy that documents can only be shared with users who have a Microsoft 365 account. Configure SharePoint external sharing.” The answer is to go to the SharePoint admin center, select “Policies,” then “Sharing,” and choose “Existing guests” (or “New and existing guests” depending on the exact requirement). Another objective is managing access control, questions might ask you to restrict SharePoint access to company-managed devices. That setting is also in the admin center under “Access control.”
MS-700 (Microsoft Teams) includes SharePoint because Teams uses SharePoint for file storage. Questions may ask: “Users cannot edit files in a Teams channel. What SharePoint setting should you check?” The answer involves looking at the SharePoint admin center for the associated site’s permissions or sharing settings. You may also be asked to configure guest access for Teams, which links back to SharePoint external sharing settings.
Beyond Microsoft exams, general IT certifications like CompTIA Cloud+ or other cloud administrator exams may touch on the concept of a centralized management console. While they do not test SharePoint specifics, understanding the role of an admin center helps with questions about cloud resource management. For instance, a scenario might ask: “An administrator needs to manage user permissions across multiple cloud applications. Which approach is most efficient?” Knowing that a single admin center can handle multiple workloads demonstrates good cloud management practices.
Exam questions often use the term “SharePoint admin center” directly, but sometimes they phrase it as “SharePoint Online admin center” or “SharePoint admin portal.” You should know they are the same thing. Also, be aware that the SharePoint admin center is different from the “Classic SharePoint admin center,” which is an older version. Newer exams assume the modern admin center (the one at admin.microsoft.com). Traps may include confusing the SharePoint admin center with the OneDrive admin center or the Teams admin center, each manages its own service, though they are related.
Simple Meaning
Imagine you run a large office building with many departments, each having its own dedicated work area. Some departments need big rooms with lots of filing cabinets, while others just need a small desk. As the building manager, you need a central office where you can see every room, decide who gets a key, set rules about visitors, and make sure nobody is hoarding too much space. The SharePoint admin center is exactly that central office for your organization’s digital workplace.
SharePoint is a platform where teams create sites, like digital rooms, to store files, share updates, and collaborate. Over time, a company might have hundreds or thousands of these sites. Without central management, things get chaotic. People create sites nobody uses, storage runs out, and sensitive data gets shared with the wrong people. The admin center prevents that chaos. It gives you a single dashboard to see all sites, check who owns them, set storage limits, and enforce security policies like “don’t share with people outside the company.”
You don’t need to know programming or complex networking to use the admin center. It is designed for IT support staff and system administrators. The interface is organized into sections like “Sites,” “Active sites,” “Storage metrics,” “External sharing,” and “Access control.” Each section lets you perform specific management tasks. For example, under “External sharing,” you can set the default sharing level to “Only people in your organization” to prevent accidental data leaks. Under “Storage metrics,” you see exactly how much space each site is using, so you can spot sites that are wasting resources.
The admin center also integrates with other Microsoft 365 admin tools. Changes you make in the SharePoint admin center affect how users experience SharePoint through their browser, Microsoft Teams, and even mobile apps. Because it is cloud-based, you can manage your SharePoint environment from any device with internet access, without needing to install any software. This makes it a critical tool for any IT professional responsible for Microsoft 365.
Full Technical Definition
The SharePoint admin center is a component of the Microsoft 365 administration suite, accessible via the Microsoft 365 admin portal at admin.microsoft.com. It provides a centralized, web-based interface for managing SharePoint Online, which is Microsoft’s cloud-based collaboration and content management platform. The admin center uses REST APIs and PowerShell cmdlets under the hood, but presents a graphical user interface for day-to-day management tasks.
At its core, the SharePoint admin center interacts with the SharePoint Online service through Microsoft’s cloud infrastructure. When an administrator configures a setting, for example, changing the external sharing policy from “Anyone” to “Existing guests”, the admin center sends a request to the SharePoint Online backend service. That service updates the tenant-wide configuration stored in Microsoft’s multi-tenant databases. The change is propagated across all site collections, typically within minutes, without any manual intervention on individual sites.
Key features accessible through the admin center include: site provisioning and deprovisioning, storage quota management, external sharing controls, access control policies, and integration settings for Microsoft Teams, OneDrive, and Viva Engage (formerly Yammer). The admin center also offers reporting and analytics, such as site usage reports, storage consumption trends, and sharing activity logs. These reports pull data from the Microsoft 365 usage analytics service, which aggregates telemetry from SharePoint Online servers.
For authentication and authorization, the SharePoint admin center leverages Azure Active Directory (Azure AD). When an admin logs in, Azure AD validates their credentials and checks whether the user has the SharePoint Administrator role or a higher role such as Global Administrator. Only users with these roles can access the admin center. The admin center also supports Conditional Access policies, so organizations can enforce multi-factor authentication (MFA) or restrict access based on device compliance before granting entry.
In an enterprise implementation, the SharePoint admin center is often used alongside PowerShell scripts and the SharePoint Management Shell for bulk operations. For example, an IT admin might use the admin center to manage a handful of sites, but use a PowerShell script to create 500 sites from a CSV file during a migration project. The admin center exposes the same underlying functionality as PowerShell, but with a point-and-click interface that reduces errors for routine tasks.
Network-wise, access to the SharePoint admin center requires connectivity to the Microsoft 365 endpoints, specifically the SharePoint Online URLs (e.g., *.sharepoint.com) and the admin center URL admin.microsoft.com. Firewalls and proxy servers must allow HTTPS traffic (port 443) to these domains. The admin center uses Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) for static assets, so latency is minimized regardless of the admin’s geographic location.
Exam-accurate details: The SharePoint admin center is documented under Microsoft’s MS-100, MS-101, and MS-700 exam objectives. Candidates should know that site collections are the top-level containers in SharePoint Online, and the admin center allows management of site collection administrators, storage limits, and sharing settings. The admin center also includes a “Recycle Bin” feature for restoring deleted sites within a 93-day window. Understanding the difference between SharePoint Admin center and SharePoint Central Administration (for on-premises SharePoint) is critical, they are different utilities, though their names are similar.
Real-Life Example
Imagine you are the property manager of a large apartment complex. The complex has 50 different buildings, each with dozens of apartments. Some tenants live alone, some have large families, and some run small businesses from their units. As the property manager, you don’t go door to door every time a rule changes or a repair is needed. Instead, you have a central office with a master key cabinet, a tenant registry, and a maintenance schedule board.
Your central office is like the SharePoint admin center. The master key cabinet lets you give access to a new plumber without visiting every door, that’s like setting external sharing permissions for a vendor. The tenant registry shows you which apartments are occupied, who the leaseholder is, and when the lease expires, that’s like the site list in the admin center showing site owners and last activity dates. The maintenance schedule board helps you track which buildings need repairs and how much budget is left, that’s like the storage metrics page showing disk usage per site.
Now, suppose a tenant in building 3 decides to sublet their apartment without telling you. As property manager, you want to prevent that because it violates policy. In your central office, you look at the subletting rules you’ve posted and see that you need to update the lease agreement for all new tenants. But with 50 buildings, updating each lease individually is impractical. Instead, you walk over to your central filing cabinet, pull out the master lease template, change the subletting clause, and make 200 copies. That’s like changing the external sharing policy in the SharePoint admin center, one change, and every site in the tenant immediately enforces the new rule.
This analogy works because both the property manager and the SharePoint admin center are about managing many distributed resources from one location. Without the central office, the property manager would waste hours running between buildings. Without the admin center, an IT admin would have to configure each SharePoint site manually, which is impossible for an organization with thousands of sites.
Why This Term Matters
In any organization, SharePoint Online quickly grows from a few sites to hundreds or thousands. Without a central management tool, IT administrators would face an unmanageable task. The SharePoint admin center matters because it provides the control, visibility, and policy enforcement needed to keep SharePoint secure, efficient, and compliant. For IT professionals, knowing how to use the admin center is not optional, it is a core daily responsibility for anyone managing Microsoft 365.
From a security perspective, the admin center is where you control who can share content externally. A single misconfiguration can expose confidential documents to the public internet. By using the admin center to set default sharing levels, block sharing with unauthenticated users, and create allow lists of trusted domains, you significantly reduce the risk of data leakage. Similarly, access control policies let you restrict access to SharePoint from unmanaged devices, which is critical for organizations with bring-your-own-device (BYOD) policies.
Performance and cost are another reason the admin center matters. Storage in SharePoint Online is pooled across the entire tenant. The admin center shows you exactly how much storage each site uses. If a team is storing large video files on a site meant for simple documents, you can see that and either migrate the videos to a cheaper storage location or raise the issue with the team. This kind of monitoring prevents storage overages and keeps the tenant healthy.
For compliance, the admin center integrates with Microsoft Purview compliance portal. You can configure data loss prevention (DLP) policies, retention labels, and eDiscovery holds from within the admin center or through related portals. Auditors often ask for evidence that external sharing is controlled and that inactive sites are archived or deleted. The admin center provides the reporting and management tools to meet those requirements.
Finally, the admin center matters because it impacts end-user experience. When an admin creates a new site with the correct template and permissions, users can start collaborating immediately without frustration. When an admin deletes an abandoned site, search results become cleaner and users find relevant content faster. The admin center directly shapes how users interact with SharePoint every day.
How It Appears in Exam Questions
Exam questions about the SharePoint admin center typically fall into three categories: scenario-based, configuration-based, and troubleshooting-based. Understanding these patterns helps you recognize the intent of the question and choose the right answer.
Scenario-based questions present a business problem and ask you to select the best action. For example: “Your company has 5,000 employees. Over the past year, users have created 2,000 SharePoint sites, but many are inactive. The CEO wants to reduce clutter and improve search results. What should you do?” The correct answer might involve using the SharePoint admin center to identify inactive sites and then either archive or delete them. Another scenario: “A manager wants to share a document with a client who does not have a Microsoft account. The company policy allows sharing with authenticated users only. What setting should you verify?” The answer links to the external sharing policy set in the SharePoint admin center.
Configuration-based questions ask you to specify a series of steps or identify which setting accomplishes a goal. For instance: “You need to ensure that only members of the ‘Site Creators’ security group can create new SharePoint sites. Which configuration in the SharePoint admin center should you use?” The correct answer is to navigate to “Settings” and then “Site creation” and select the security group. Another example: “You want to receive a notification when a site exceeds 90% of its storage quota. Which feature of the SharePoint admin center should you enable?” The answer is “Storage management notifications.”
Troubleshooting-based questions describe a symptom and ask you to find the root cause using the admin center. For example: “Users report that they cannot share a document with an external partner, even though sharing is enabled at the organization level. What should you check first?” The correct approach is to check the site-level sharing settings in the SharePoint admin center, because site-level settings can override tenant-level settings. Another troubleshooting question: “A site collection administrator reports that they cannot change the site logo. What could be the cause?” The answer might be that the site has been locked in the SharePoint admin center, preventing modifications.
Some questions test your knowledge of where to find specific settings. For instance: “Where do you configure the default external sharing level for all new sites?” The answer is the “Sharing” section under “Policies” in the SharePoint admin center. Another: “Which role is required to access the SharePoint admin center?” The answer is “SharePoint Administrator” or “Global Administrator.”
Finally, questions may ask about integration with other admin centers. For example: “A Teams administrator needs to change the file-sharing permissions for a Teams channel. In which admin center should they make the change?” While the Teams admin center handles Teams-specific settings, the actual file permissions are managed through the SharePoint admin center for the underlying site. Questions like this test your understanding of the relationship between Microsoft 365 services.
Knowing these question patterns helps you study more effectively. When you read a question, first identify whether it is scenario, configuration, or troubleshooting. Then recall the specific setting or feature in the SharePoint admin center that addresses that situation. Practice with Microsoft Learn modules and official practice tests to become fluent in navigating these question types.
Practise SharePoint admin center Questions
Test your understanding with exam-style practice questions.
Example Scenario
You are an IT support specialist at a mid-sized marketing agency with 200 employees. The agency uses Microsoft 365, and your team relies on SharePoint for client project collaboration. One morning, the head of the creative department calls you in a panic. She says that her team’s SharePoint site, called “CreativeAssets,” suddenly cannot be accessed by their external design contractor, who was previously able to view and edit files. The contractor does not have a Microsoft 365 account, they log in using a guest link.
You start by opening the SharePoint admin center from the Microsoft 365 admin portal. You navigate to the “Active sites” section and locate the “CreativeAssets” site. Clicking on the site name, you see a panel with details about the site, including its sharing settings. There you notice that the external sharing setting for this site is set to “Only people in your organization.” However, you remember that the tenant-level external sharing policy is set to “Anyone (no authentication required)”, a very permissive setting. This is a classic scenario where a site-level setting overrides the tenant-level policy. Someone likely changed the site sharing setting by mistake, or it was never configured correctly for the “CreativeAssets” site.
You scroll down in the settings panel to the “External sharing” section and change it from “Only people in your organization” to “Anyone (no authentication required)”, matching the tenant default. You click “Save.” Within a few seconds, the contractor receives a message that they can access the site again. You then call the head of the creative department to confirm that the contractor can now log in. She confirms it works, and you document the change in your ticketing system.
This scenario demonstrates a real-world use of the SharePoint admin center. Without it, you would have had to ask a site owner to check their site settings manually, or worse, escalate to a global administrator to modify the tenant-wide policy. Instead, you resolved the issue in under five minutes. This example also highlights an important exam concept: site-level sharing settings can be more restrictive than tenant-level settings, but not more permissive. Understanding this hierarchy is critical for both exams and real-world administration.
Common Mistakes
Thinking the SharePoint admin center and the OneDrive admin center are the same.
Although both are part of Microsoft 365, the OneDrive admin center manages user-owned OneDrive for Business storage, while the SharePoint admin center manages team and communication sites. They have different settings, scopes, and purposes.
Remember: SharePoint admin center = sites for teams; OneDrive admin center = personal storage for users. If the question is about a team drive, use the SharePoint admin center.
Believing that changing a setting in the SharePoint admin center takes effect immediately for all users.
While most changes propagate quickly (within minutes), some settings, especially those related to security or syncing, can take up to 24 hours to apply fully. Expecting instant updates can lead to confusion and false troubleshooting.
Always check Microsoft documentation for propagation times. For security-critical changes, test with a small group first.
Assuming that the external sharing setting at the tenant level always applies to all sites.
Site-level sharing settings can be more restrictive than the tenant-level policy. If a site admin sets a site to “Only people in your organization,” that overrides a more permissive tenant setting. This is a common exam trap.
When troubleshooting sharing issues, always check both the tenant-level policy (in SharePoint admin center under Policies > Sharing) and the site-level settings (in Active sites > select site > Sharing).
Thinking that any user with a Microsoft 365 license can access the SharePoint admin center.
Only users with the SharePoint Administrator role, Global Administrator role, or a custom role that includes SharePoint admin permissions can access the admin center. Regular users cannot see it at all.
If you need to grant someone admin access, assign the SharePoint Administrator role in Azure AD or the Microsoft 365 admin center. Do not give them Global Administrator unless necessary.
Confusing the SharePoint admin center with SharePoint Central Administration (on-premises).
SharePoint Central Administration is the management interface for on-premises SharePoint Server, while the SharePoint admin center is for SharePoint Online. They look different and have different features. Exam questions are careful to specify which one they mean.
If the question mentions “cloud” or “Microsoft 365,” it’s the SharePoint admin center. If it mentions “SharePoint Server” or “on-premises,” it’s Central Administration.
Exam Trap — Don't Get Fooled
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”","how_to_avoid_it":"Memorize the rule: Site-level sharing settings can be more restrictive than the tenant policy, but never more permissive. The most restrictive setting wins. In this case, “Only people in your organization” is more restrictive, so that applies to the site.
Always think: “The tenant sets the maximum; sites can dial down, not up.
Step-by-Step Breakdown
Access the SharePoint admin center
Navigate to admin.microsoft.com and sign in with your Global Administrator or SharePoint Administrator credentials. In the left navigation pane, expand “Admin centers” and select “SharePoint.” Alternatively, you can go directly to the URL specific to your tenant, such as https://yourtenant-admin.sharepoint.com. The admin center displays a dashboard with key metrics, including total sites, active sites, and storage usage.
Review the dashboard overview
The main dashboard shows at-a-glance information: number of active sites, total storage consumed, external sharing activity, and any pending alerts. This is a good starting point for monitoring the health of your SharePoint environment. For example, if storage usage is near your tenant limit, you might see a warning. The dashboard is customizable, but exam questions typically reference the default views.
Navigate to Active sites to manage site collections
From the left menu, click “Active sites” to see a list of all SharePoint Online sites in your tenant. Each row shows the site name, URL, template type (team site or communication site), owner, last activity date, and storage used. Clicking on a site opens a detail panel where you can change owners, set storage limits, configure sharing, manage site permissions, or delete the site. This is where most day-to-day operations happen.
Configure external sharing policies
Under “Policies” in the left menu, select “Sharing.” Here you set the default external sharing level for all new sites: “Anyone,” “New and existing guests,” “Existing guests,” or “Only people in your organization.” You can also control file and folder sharing, including links that anyone can use. These settings can be overridden at the site level, but only to be more restrictive.
Manage site creation permissions
Still under “Settings,” you can restrict who can create new SharePoint sites. By default, all users can create sites, which may lead to sprawl. In the admin center, navigate to “Settings” and then “Site creation.” You can specify a security group whose members are the only ones allowed to create sites. This is a common exam objective for controlling content growth.
Monitor storage and usage analytics
The “Storage metrics” section under “Reports” provides a detailed breakdown of storage consumption by site. You can sort by site name, size, or last activity date to identify sites that are using excessive space or are inactive. This section is critical for cost management and compliance. In the “Usage analytics” section, you can view trends over time, such as number of active users per site, file views, and file downloads.
Set up access control policies
Under “Access control,” you can enforce security policies like device-based access, location-based access, and idle session timeout. For example, you can require that users only access SharePoint from managed devices (compliant with Intune or Hybrid Azure AD join). This is a key feature for enterprise security on exams.
Practical Mini-Lesson
To effectively manage a SharePoint Online environment, you must understand the relationship between tenant-level settings and site-level settings. The SharePoint admin center gives you control at both layers, but knowing which layer to change is crucial.
Start with the tenant-level sharing policy. In most organizations, you want to set a default that aligns with your security posture. For example, if your company deals with sensitive data, set the default to “Existing guests” so that external users must already have a guest account created in Azure AD. This prevents anonymous sharing. However, you may have specific projects that require sharing with external collaborators who don’t have accounts. For those projects, you can create a site collection and override the sharing setting to “Anyone”, but only if the tenant policy allows it. Remember: site-level settings cannot be more permissive than the tenant setting. So if your tenant policy is “Only people in your organization,” no site can enable external sharing.
Another practical consideration is site ownership. In the admin center, you can see each site’s owner. If a site has no owner (the owner left the company), the site becomes an orphan. You should assign a new owner to prevent the site from becoming unmanageable. The admin center lets you change the site owner directly. You can also use the admin center to monitor site activity. If a site has had no activity for 90 days, consider archiving or deleting it. You can do this manually or configure retention policies through the compliance portal, which integrates with the admin center.
Storage management is another daily task. SharePoint Online gives your tenant a base storage pool, plus additional storage based on licenses. The admin center shows you exactly how much storage each site uses. If a site is approaching its quota, you can increase it (if you have available pool storage) or ask the site owner to clean up files. Use the “Storage metrics” report to identify the top storage consumers. You can also set alerts to notify you when a site reaches a certain percentage of its quota.
Finally, understand the role of the SharePoint admin center in troubleshooting. When a user reports that they cannot share a file, you should first check if the user has a SharePoint license. Then check the tenant-level external sharing policy in the admin center. If that is permissive enough, check the site-level sharing setting. If that is also correct, check the specific folder or file sharing permissions (which can be set from the site itself, not the admin center). This systematic approach resolves most issues.
In practice, IT professionals often combine the SharePoint admin center with PowerShell for bulk operations. For example, to generate a list of all sites with external sharing enabled, you would use the admin center to export a CSV list of sites, then run a PowerShell script to check sharing status. However, the admin center alone is sufficient for most small-to-medium environments. Focus on mastering the interface, the key settings, and the hierarchy of policies, that will serve you well in both exams and real-world administration.
Memory Tip
To remember that site settings can only be more restrictive than tenant settings: “The tenant draws the fence; sites can lock the gate.”
Covered in These Exams
Current Exam Context
Current exam versions that test this topic — use these objectives when studying.
MS-900MS-900 →XK0-006CompTIA Linux+ →Legacy Exam Context
Older materials may mention these exam versions, but learners should use the current objectives for their target exam.
MS-100MS-102(current version)MS-101MS-102(current version)Related Glossary Terms
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Frequently Asked Questions
Who can access the SharePoint admin center?
Only users with the SharePoint Administrator role, Global Administrator role, or a custom role that includes SharePoint admin permissions can access it. Regular users cannot see the admin center.
How do I change the external sharing policy for a specific site?
In the SharePoint admin center, go to “Active sites,” select the site, open the settings panel, then find “External sharing.” There you can choose a sharing level that is equal to or more restrictive than the tenant policy.
What is the difference between the SharePoint admin center and the classic SharePoint admin center?
The modern SharePoint admin center has a refreshed interface and additional features like storage metrics, usage analytics, and access control policies. The classic version is older and lacks these features. Microsoft recommends using the modern admin center.
Can I manage on-premises SharePoint from the SharePoint admin center?
No, the SharePoint admin center only manages SharePoint Online. On-premises SharePoint is managed using SharePoint Central Administration installed on the server farm.
How long does it take for changes made in the SharePoint admin center to apply?
Most changes apply within minutes, but some settings (e.g., certain security policies) can take up to 24 hours. Always test after a reasonable wait and check Microsoft documentation for specific propagation times.
What should I do if a site owner leaves the company and the site has no owner?
In the SharePoint admin center, go to “Active sites,” select the orphaned site, and in the settings panel, assign a new owner. This prevents the site from becoming unmanaged.