On Thursday, November 12, 2026, Microsoft 365 had a widespread outage. Microsoft confirmed it was investigating problems reaching Exchange Online mailboxes in Outlook, first across the Americas and then possibly in any region, and many offices spent part of the day unable to get at their email. Days like this are a good, low-stress reminder of something that surprises a lot of business owners.
Microsoft keeps the service running. Your data is still your job.
Microsoft works hard to keep its services up, and outages like this one usually get fixed within hours. But keeping a service running is not the same as backing up your business. Microsoft’s own Services Agreement says the services can be interrupted and recommends that you regularly back up your content and data. If an email is deleted by mistake, a file is overwritten, an account is compromised, or ransomware encrypts a synced folder, getting it back is largely up to you.
An outage only means you have to wait. Lost data is a much bigger problem. A good setup protects you from both.
Five things to check this week
- Keep working copies on your own computer. Make sure the files you use every day are set to be kept on the device, not only in the cloud, so you can keep working when the internet or Microsoft is down.
- Back up your Microsoft 365 data separately. That means email, OneDrive, SharePoint and Teams files, copied to a backup service or storage that isn’t part of the same Microsoft account. If the account has a problem, the backup doesn’t.
- Follow the 3-2-1 rule. Three copies of anything important, on two different kinds of storage, with one copy kept somewhere else, such as off-site or in a separate cloud.
- Test a restore. A backup you have never restored from is only a hope. Pick one file or one old email and make sure you can actually get it back.
- Have a plan B for contact. Keep a short list of your key customers’ and suppliers’ phone numbers somewhere other than your email, and know how you’ll tell people you’re reachable if email goes quiet.
During an outage
Check Microsoft’s official service status before you start changing settings or resetting passwords; often nothing is wrong on your end. Be extra careful with emails or calls claiming to “fix” your Microsoft account during an outage, because scammers like to take advantage of the confusion. Microsoft will not phone you out of the blue to fix your computer.
Don’t have this in place? That’s what we do.
Dok-Tor Harddrive has been looking after computers for businesses in southern Alberta since 1990. If you don’t have a backup system for your Microsoft 365 email and files, or you’re not sure the one you have actually works, let us know. We’ll:
- check what you have now and what you’d lose on a bad day,
- set up local working copies so your team can keep going during an outage,
- set up a separate backup of your email, OneDrive, SharePoint and Teams files that doesn’t depend on the same Microsoft account,
- test that it actually restores, and keep an eye on it so you don’t have to.
Book a free consultation and we’ll get you sorted before the next outage, not after it.