A widespread Microsoft outage disrupted Outlook, Teams, Copilot, and other Microsoft 365 services on Thursday, November 12, 2026, leaving thousands of users struggling to access emails and essential workplace tools. Microsoft traced the disruption to server-related problems and began working to restore the affected services.
The outage affected users across several regions, with Microsoft Outlook experiencing the most significant disruption. Many users reported difficulties accessing their inboxes, sending or receiving emails, and using other Microsoft 365 applications.
According to outage-tracking website Downdetector, reports of Microsoft Outlook problems peaked at approximately 138,000 on Thursday, November 12, highlighting the scale of the disruption.
The outage began on Thursday, November 12, when users started reporting problems signing in to Outlook, opening their inboxes, and sending or receiving emails. As reports grew, Microsoft acknowledged the problem and began investigating. The company initially reported connectivity issues in the Americas but later said Microsoft 365 services in other regions could also be affected.
According to Downdetector, Outlook outage reports peaked at nearly 138,000 on Thursday. Users continued reporting problems into Friday, November 13, although the number of complaints gradually declined.
By around 4:30 a.m. IST on Friday, reported issues had dropped to about 34,500, indicating services were beginning to recover for some users.
The outage caused the most trouble for Outlook and Exchange Online users, many of whom couldn’t open their inboxes or send and receive emails. Microsoft Teams users faced problems with calendars and scheduling meetings. Some Copilot users also had trouble opening AI chats and accessing work-related information.
Other services affected included SharePoint Online, Planner, To Do, Power BI, Microsoft Defender, Purview, and some Microsoft 365 Education features. However, regular Teams chats and video meetings were mostly unaffected. Features that didn’t depend on Exchange Online also continued to work.
Microsoft linked the outage to technical issues within its server infrastructure. According to the company, several servers unexpectedly became unavailable after failing automated health checks, putting additional pressure on the remaining systems and causing connectivity problems.
Further investigation revealed that a process responsible for establishing secure connections had become overloaded, preventing affected servers from responding to requests.
Microsoft clarified that the issue was not caused by an overall increase in traffic but by a shortage of available servers. The company also began reversing a recent network configuration change to investigate whether it contributed to the disruption.
Microsoft took several steps to restore its affected services, including restarting servers, pausing deployments, and redirecting network traffic away from overloaded infrastructure. The company also tested configuration changes on selected servers and introduced temporary traffic restrictions to improve system stability.
Microsoft reported that Teams-related issues in North America had been restored, although some users continued experiencing connectivity problems. By Friday, November 13, recovery efforts were ongoing, with services gradually returning to normal.