After Microsoft 365 services went down on 12 November, affecting millions of users worldwide, here is how you can keep using Outlook while the issue is fixed.
The disruption on Thursday 12 November mainly affected Outlook, but it also hit Teams, Copilot and the rest of the Microsoft 365 tools. According to reports collected by the Downdetector website, the outage was particularly widespread in the Americas.
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Microsoft explained on X that it had received reports from users who could not access their Exchange Online mailboxes through different connection methods in the Americas, Europe, Africa and the rest of the world.
The Redmond-based company later said that part of its infrastructure was carrying a higher than normal load, which probably caused the errors, and announced that it would redistribute traffic across its systems. The Teams platform appears to be working at the moment, although some users were still reporting difficulties.
How to keep working while Outlook is not responding
The first step is to check whether the problem is still ongoing. Microsoft publishes updates on its X account, @MSFT365Status (source in Spanish), and maintains a status page at status.cloud.microsoft.
If you are an administrator, Microsoft’s documentation says that the Microsoft 365 admin centre has a service status section showing open and resolved incidents, accessible to those with the service support administrator or Helpdesk admin roles.
It is better not to expect too much from switching apps. Since the outage affects access to Exchange Online mailboxes through different connection methods, moving from the desktop app to another one may not help at all. TechRadar pointed this out during a previous outage in July 2025, when the web version, mobile app and desktop client all failed at the same time.
If you use desktop Outlook with a Microsoft 365 or Exchange account, there is a useful option. According to Microsoft, Exchange cached mode (source in Spanish) lets you work with mailbox items even when the network connection is slow or unavailable. It does not work with POP or IMAP accounts.
In addition, the Send/Receive tab includes a Work Offline button, available in Outlook for Microsoft 365 and in the 2021, 2019 and 2016 versions. It allows you to keep reading and drafting messages using the content already stored on your computer.
For the rest of your work, the suggestion is to switch to channels that do not depend on Microsoft. It proposes internal messaging tools such as Slack or Google Chat to coordinate the team, and uploading large files to WeTransfer or Google Drive so the link can be shared through another route. Teams also experienced incidents on Thursday, so it is not the safest option for this coordination, although on Friday it is working in most regions.
What alternatives to Outlook are available
If the outage leads you to consider other options, it is worth distinguishing between email providers and programs used to read your mail. Changing program does not change where your mailbox is hosted. Thunderbird, for example, can connect to a Microsoft 365 account via IMAP, but that account is still hosted on Microsoft’s servers. To rely on another provider you need to open an account with them.
Among internet providers, Arsys describes Gmail as a free service with gmail.com accounts, apps for Android and iOS and integration with Drive, Google Calendar and Google Meet. It points to two limits: storage is shared with other Google services, and to use your own domain you need Google Workspace, which is a paid service.
Kinsta lists Proton Mail, an open-source service based in Switzerland that offers end to end encryption, web access and apps for Android and iOS. It has a free plan, although custom domains are only available on paid plans.
