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GMail Is Down: How to Access Your Mail & Assess the Outage

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GMail experienced an outage today, according to DownRightNow. When GMail goes down, it can be incredibly frustrating for people who use the service to communicate with clients, colleagues, and friends. Here’s a quick guide that will help you assess the severity of the outage, access your email during the outage, and help you blow off some steam.

1. Make Sure GMail Actually Is Down

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Is GMail down for everybody, or is it a problem specific to you? To find out, you can visit a site like Down For Everybody Or Just Me. You can also follow @DownRightNow on Twitter.

2. Check What Other Google Services Are Down

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You can visit Google’s Apps Status Dashboard to see what other Google services might also be down. Talk, Calendar, Drive, Google+, or Google Voice might still be up, even if GMail is down, allowing you to continue to communicate with your contacts.

3. Try Accessing GMail a Different Way

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When Gmail goes down, it’s often only on the web. The Gmail mobile client may still be working just fine. Additionally, IMAP and POP3 access may not be interrupted, allowing people who use other desktop mail clients (such as Thunderbird or Microsoft Outlook) to continue to access their important messages.

4. Arrange For Offline Access

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If you use the Chrome web browser, then you should definitely download GMail Offline, a free Chrome browser app that allows users to read, respond to, search, or archive their GMail messages without network access. TechRepublic notes, however, that this app only lets you download up to the last month of your mail. Having this app set up an synchronized can make the next GMail outage less annoying for you.

However, as the tweet above shows, GMail Offline isn’t immune from issues of its own.

5. Blow Off Some Steam

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The fact remains that when GMail goes down, people get stressed out. Even if the outage was short, or you found a way to work around the outage, you still may need to blow off some steam. Head to Twitter and look for hashtags like #whengmailwasdown to commiserate with other affected users.

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