Stephanie Kahlam
Microsoft Forms data is stored in servers in the United States.
“Location of Customer Data at Rest for Core Online Services”
How might this affect you? You might assume, for example, that if your Office 365 tenancy is in Canada that all your data resides in Canada as well. This, however, is not the case.
It’s kind of misleading too because if you look at your Data location in the Office 365 admin portal it appears as if the data is all in one place. Our tenancy shows me that our Microsoft 365 data location is all in Canada.
Looks good right? All my super secret Forms data that I have collected is safe in Canada, right?!
Nope…
Consider what you are using Microsoft Forms to collect information on:
- Social Insurance Numbers
- Birth dates
- Contact numbers
- Addresses
- Or any other information that should otherwise be protected by your countries Data Protection laws.
You need to know that this information will be stored as “Data at rest” on servers in the United States, as will data from other services noted below.
What are alternatives to Microsoft Forms?
Some popular alternatives to Microsoft forms include Google Forms, Jotform, Typeform, SurveyMonkey and Formstack. The form platform that you choose depends on your software of choice and complexity of survey required.
Platforms such as Jotform include over 10,000 templates and ways to integrate sales leads with surveys. However, like Microsoft Forms, Jotform survey data is also stored in the US, or Germany if requested.
Typeform is a sleeker interface known to work well across all platforms. Regroove love using Typeform due to the simple nature of creating forms. Typeform data is stored in the US too, Virginia to be more specific on AWS.
It appears there are many popular form creation web platforms out there, but limited options if you wish to have your form data stored outside the US.
Looking to create a Quick Poll in Microsoft Teams using Microsoft Forms?
Check out Regroove’s video on using Microsoft Forms within Teams.
If I have an Excel spreadsheet on my sharepoint which is stored in Canada, and I have a MS Form to populate the spreadsheet is that data stored in Canada or the US? If it’s stored in Canada, does any of it stay in the US as it goes through Forms?
MS Forms data is stored in the US. The data from the form can be exported to the Excel spreadsheet in SharePoint online but the original form and its contents will reside in the US.
Where data is stored for Microsoft Forms
Microsoft Forms data is stored on servers in the United States, with the exception of data for European-based tenants. The data for European-based tenants is stored on servers in Europe.
Hi Stephanie, just to be clear. If I based in the UK and the survey is carried out in any other nation, where is the data stored and how can it be deleted when no longer required?