Microsoft is battling a major global outage that has disrupted Outlook, Teams, Copilot and several other Microsoft 365 services, leaving users across dozens of countries unable to access essential workplace tools.
The disruption began on Thursday, November 12, 2026, after Microsoft’s Exchange Online infrastructure experienced connectivity problems. The incident subsequently affected other applications that depend on the company’s cloud-based systems.
Downdetector recorded reports from users in 74 countries and territories within approximately an hour of the disruption. The outage tracker also logged nearly 130,000 reports of Outlook problems in the United States alone.
Microsoft has struggled to restore normal operations, with its initial recovery measures failing to deliver the expected results.
In an update published on Friday, November 13, Microsoft 365 Status acknowledged that its efforts to improve service availability had not worked as planned.
“We’ve monitored the status of the changes applied to improve serviceability and confirmed that change is not taking as expected,” the company stated.
Microsoft added that engineers were exploring alternative measures to restore capacity amid persistent traffic-management problems.
The outage has affected several applications within Microsoft’s workplace and productivity ecosystem. Outlook users reported difficulties accessing their inboxes, sending and receiving emails and connecting to their Exchange Online mailboxes.
Microsoft Teams also experienced disruptions, particularly in features that depend on Exchange Online. These include calendar functions, meeting invitations and scheduling.
Microsoft Copilot users also encountered problems accessing the artificial intelligence assistant and retrieving information from connected Microsoft 365 applications.
Other affected services included SharePoint Online, Microsoft Planner, Microsoft To Do and some Microsoft Defender and Purview features.
However, the outage did not disable every feature across the affected applications. Microsoft’s service advisory indicated that some Teams functions, including standard channels and core messaging features, remained available.
Users could also continue accessing files stored directly in SharePoint Online, although functions connected to Exchange Online experienced problems.
The disruption also affected third-party technology companies that rely on Microsoft’s services. OpenAI and Anthropic reported problems with tools connected to Microsoft 365.
Microsoft’s investigation identified unexpected server failures as a major factor behind the disruption. The company reported that some servers became unavailable, placing additional pressure on the infrastructure that remained operational.
The resulting capacity imbalance affected the systems responsible for handling user requests and establishing connections to Microsoft services.
Microsoft initially reported connectivity problems affecting Exchange Online mailboxes in the Americas before acknowledging that customers in other regions could also experience disruptions.
The company also investigated a recent network configuration change that appeared to coincide with the beginning of the incident.
However, Microsoft had not established a definitive root cause in its public service updates by Friday morning.
The company also said it had no indication that malicious activity or a cyberattack caused the outage.
Microsoft’s engineers have encountered difficulties restoring affected servers without triggering further disruptions.
Some servers that initially returned to service became unresponsive again after engineers reintroduced normal user traffic.
This complicated the recovery process because simply restarting affected systems did not guarantee that they would remain operational once users reconnected.
Microsoft began exploring alternative ways to increase infrastructure capacity and manage traffic across its affected systems.
The company also considered additional recovery measures to stabilise servers before gradually allowing more user connections.
In another update, Microsoft said it was: “We’re identifying alternate workstreams that can be applied to increase capacity in the face of sustained traffic management imbalances.”
Microsoft advised administrators to follow the incident updates through the Microsoft 365 Admin Centre and its service health channels.
The disruption affected organisations that depend on Microsoft applications for daily communication and administration.
Government agencies in several countries, including Singapore, Japan, Australia and the Philippines, reported problems accessing email and other workplace services.
Businesses also experienced interruptions as employees struggled to communicate, schedule meetings and retrieve information from their Microsoft accounts.
In India, airline IndiGo reported disruptions to its email customer-support channels. Other organisations also relied on alternative communication arrangements while Microsoft worked on the problem.
Microsoft continued working to restore affected services on Friday, November 13, but had not announced a definitive timeline for full recovery.
