Breaking Up With Intune

The Essential Guide to Unenrolling Your Fleet

Retiring your hardware is a bit like a breakup: if you don’t officially end things, your old devices will keep showing up in your Intune portal like an unwanted ghost. To ensure we can process your gear quickly (and for free!), you need to sever the link between your hardware and your Microsoft Endpoint Manager.

1. The “Single Exit” (Individual Devices)

Best for testing a few units or handling small batches.

1. Log in to the Microsoft Intune admin center.
2. Go to Devices > All devices.
3. Search for the serial number or device name.
4. The Critical Choice: “Retire” vs. “Wipe”
   • Select “Retire”: This removes managed app data, settings, and email profiles assigned by Intune, but leaves the user’s personal data. This is the “cleanest” way to unenroll for ITAD.
   • Select “Wipe”: This factory resets the device. Note: On Windows 10/11, if you select “Wipe” and the device is still in your Autopilot list, it will just re-enroll as soon as it touches the internet!

2. The “Power Move” (Bulk Unenrollment)

Got a pallet of 100 laptops? Don’t click 100 times. Use Bulk Device Actions.

1. In the All devices list, click Bulk Device Actions at the top.
2. OS: Select the platform (Windows, iOS, etc.).
3. Action: Select Retire.
4. Items to act on: You can manually select devices from the list or—even better—upload a CSV file containing the Device IDs or Serial Numbers.
5. Click Create. Intune will now go through and “offboard” those devices in the background while you grab a coffee.

3. The “Final Goodbye” (Autopilot & Entra ID)

For Windows devices, Intune is only half the battle. If a device is in your Autopilot list, it’s still “yours” in the eyes of Microsoft.

• Remove from Autopilot: Go to Devices > Windows > Windows enrollment > Devices. Search for your serial numbers and click Delete. If you don’t do this, the next person who turns the laptop on will see your company’s login screen!
• Clean up Entra ID (formerly Azure AD): Once retired from Intune, the device record usually stays in Entra ID. While not strictly “locked,” it’s good housekeeping to delete these stale records to keep your security posture tight.

The ITAD Golden Rule: Always remove the device from Autopilot before you send it to us. If a device arrives and is still tethered to your Autopilot profile, it’s a “digital brick” that we can’t refurbish—which leads to that £25 recovery fee we both want to avoid!

Having trouble with “Stale” records? If your Intune portal is showing devices that haven’t checked in for 90 days, let us know. We can help you script a cleanup so you’re only paying for (and managing) what you actually own.