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Get an emergency, backup email account

25 March 2020

Be prepared for the possibility that one mailhost/email address might not work. That’s a risk at any time, not just now. Setup an emergency, backup email account.

One way to prepare is having TWO email addresses with different mail hosts. If one stops, you can keep sending messages with another, already setup.

Setup the alternate account, make sure you know how to login, bookmark the web login link, note the password etc. Ideally set the extra account into Outlook for Windows/Mac.

If an important email doesn’t arrive as expected, you can ask for a resend to the alternate address. Or send a message to a customer, friend, family via the emergency address if the main one doesn’t work.

See Prepare your computer for isolation or quarantine

Prepare for a Microsoft Office 365 – OneDrive outage

Three ways you must prepare for a Microsoft Office 365 email outage

Totally separate

There’s little point in having a separate address or mailbox using the same hardware as your main account. Both would probably fail at the same time!

The trick is to use a totally different company for mail hosting. That’s easy these days with two major companies providing good, free mailboxes at no charge. Microsoft’s Outlook.com and Google’s Gmail to say nothing of Yahoo mail and many others.

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A second mailbox on standby

For example, an ISP based email and either Gmail or Outlook.com . We strongly suggest moving away from email addresses via Internet Service Providers, but that’s a topic we’ mentioned many times before. Organizing Outlook Email has a whole chapter devoted to moving off ISP email to something fitting for 21^st Century life.

Have a work email? What hosts that account? If it’s Microsoft (Office 365 etc) then have a Google Gmail ready. If it’s a Google hosted corporate email, get an Outlook.com account ‘just in case’.

Testing your mailboxes

Having a second, entirely separate mailbox is also handy for testing. You can send messages from one mail address to another, to check if one is working and how fast messages are being delivered.

Hopefully you’ll never need the other mailbox, but it’s better to be ready than scramble for an alternative when trouble strikes.

Three ways you must prepare for a Microsoft Office 365 email outage

Prepare your computer for isolation or quarantine

Prepare for a Microsoft Office 365 – OneDrive outage

Is my email slowing down? and what to do about it