Microsoft 365 outage: How to keep working and best Outlook alternatives

Microsoft 365 services, including Outlook, Teams, and Copilot, experienced a major outage on November 12, affecting millions of users globally, with the company attributing the issue to excessive load on its infrastructure. The disruption primarily impacted access to Exchange Online mailboxes across the Americas, Europe, Africa, and worldwide. Microsoft is redistributing traffic to resolve the problem, and while Teams is mostly functional, some users still report issues. Users can check status updates via Microsoft's X account or its cloud status page. For continued work, Outlook's offline mode allows access to cached emails for Microsoft 365 and Exchange accounts, though not POP or IMAP. Alternatives like Slack or Google Chat can coordinate teams, and file-sharing via WeTransfer or Google Drive is suggested. Switching email providers, such as Gmail or Proton Mail, requires creating a new account.