Microsoft deletes nonprofit customers’ M365 data — and says it can’t get it back

• Microsoft has admitted cloud-based M365 data owned by licensed nonprofits has been deleted in a license-switching cock-up
• Microsoft retired its 365 Business Premium Grant license, advising nonprofits to move to the Microsoft 365 Business Basic for free
• The deleted data cannot be retrieved

Microsoft has admitted it accidentally deleted the data from an undisclosed number of nonprofits with retiring Microsoft 365 Business Premium Grant licenses. While advising the customers to switch to a different license for free and offering a retention and export window, the software behemoth somehow managed to lose their data, rather than retain it.

Worse, Microsoft has also admitted the lost data is irretrievable. So unless the organizations concerned had their own backups of the cloud-based data, the situation is irreversible.