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# This is a test: What Day 1 of the great Office shutdown would look like
- URL: https://www.nupath.eu/this-is-a-test-what-day-1-of-the-great-office-shutdown-would-look-like/
- Published: 2026-11-13T08:27:20.000Z
- Updated: 2026-11-13T10:26:22.000Z
- Author: Christian Triantafillou Schade
- Tags: Tools and tech, Opinion

This morning, Europeans across the private and public sectors, as well as private individuals, woke up to [defective Microsoft services](https://status.cloud.microsoft/?ref=nupath.eu) that had been offline or partially offline for several hours during the night. Today will show us what this kind of dependency looks like in real life. It's a test of any future digital sovereignty conflict scenario. (midday update: [Still major issues, follow downtimes here](https://sa.downdetector.com/en/?ref=nupath.eu))  
  
Microsoft email didn't work. Teams was partially down. There were problems with different tools across the entire Microsoft 365 stack, including Outlook.com, OneDrive, OneNote, Microsoft To Do and Teams. Also enterprise tools such as Power Apps, Admin Center, Microsoft Defender, Planner, Fabric, Purview, Power BI, SharePoint and even corner cases of the mundane act of printing or accessing cloud-based PC’s.

It important to stress that there are no indications of nefarious activity here, including hacking or politically motivated purposeful disruption.

Let us use this situation to remind us of what a day without Microsoft services could look like.

First of all, make note of what is happening right now:  
 \- What is not working?  
 \- What are your workarounds and fallback solutions?  
 \- Can you communicate with your organization and your key partners?  
 \- What can you do to re-establish the lines of communication and keep productive?  
 \- Where is your data? Is it safe and accessible?

*Then* look at other tools like spreadsheets, presentations, and other productivity.

Next up, look at the specialised systems you are using, such as project management or enterprise software-as-a-service (SaaS); they are probably not affected *this time*, but if they are integrated with Microsoft platforms, there might be some data losses.

Here is a list of key replacements that everybody should have ready whenever something like this happens. You might have looked at them before and discarded them as sub-par, but right now, they are your best friends, and they have caught up in general; there is a full universe of credible and excellent alternatives out there. 

Here’s the very short list of good places to start:

- Office apps: [OnlyOffice](https://www.onlyoffice.com/docs?ref=nupath.eu)
- Email, calendar, cloud storage: [Proton](https://proton.me/?ref=nupath.eu)
- Messenger: [We are still missing a credible full-service enterprise Messenger](https://www.nupath.eu/we-are-missing-a-messenger/)/Teams alternative, but [Viber](https://www.viber.com/en/?ref=nupath.eu) or [Matrix](https://matrix.org/?ref=nupath.eu)\-based solutions can do a decent job in a tight squeeze, and Matrix is showing promise.
- AI: [Mistral AI](https://mistral.ai/?ref=nupath.eu)

Have a great Friday, and I expect folks across Europe to take an early weekend :-)