Microsoft Outage LIVE: Microsoft begins restoring Outlook, Teams and other services after global outage

A widespread outage hit Microsoft platforms, including Outlook, on Thursday (November 12, 2026), with many users encountering trouble using their email accounts and other errors across the tech giant’s suite of apps. Also read | Job cuts, retirement plan, voluntary exits: What’s going on at Microsoft?

Nearly 1,30,000 users on outage tracker Downdetector reported problems accessing Outlook just after 1 pm local time. New reports have since fallen from that peak, but many said they couldn’t send and receive emails or had trouble loading their inboxes altogether.

Thousands also reported issues with Microsoft’s workplace messaging app Teams, as well as its AI assistant Copilot and wider Microsoft 365 services. Microsoft said it was investigating disruptions, notably related to its email and Teams applications.

The story so far: Software giant Microsoft is facing a widespread outage affecting users of its Outlook email service, as well as its other workplace products. Thousands of Microsoft users in India awakened on Friday (November 13, 2026) to find their inboxes inaccessible, losing hours of productivity.

According to DownDetector, over 100,000 users had initially registered complaints about Microsoft Outlook.​Microsoft Outage: Why did Microsoft Outlook and other products go offline globally?Microsoft shared on X on November 13 that a portion of infrastructure was experiencing elevated load across multiple regions, and this could likely be contributing to the connectivity errors.

Microsoft 365 has reported improving service availability and email delivery performance across affected infrastructure, adding that there is no indication that the outage was caused by malicious or cyber activity. The company said its teams are reviewing the incident and working to prevent similar disruptions in the future.

Microsoft says service availability is improving, with email queues significantly reduced and approaching normal levels. However, some users may continue to face intermittent access issues and delayed email delivery as the company restores affected infrastructure and monitors recovery.

Microsoft said it was seeing continued recovery progress across affected regions, with broader improvements in North America and across much of Europe. Microsoft said service availability and email delivery were improving across a growing portion of the affected Microsoft 365 infrastructure, though some users may still face intermittent issues.

It is prioritising reducing the email queue and backlog, and the extended 48-hour email timeout window stays in place to protect delayed messages. An issue affecting Microsoft products worldwide was having a “serious impact” on Britain’s National Health Service (NHS), Rachel Harrison, public services head at the GMB union, said on Friday (November 13, 2026).

Staff receiving emergency calls were “unable to refer patient details in the normal way,” creating “a massive backlog,” though emergency and life-threatening call-outs “appear to be unaffected,” she said. Microsoft ruled out “malicious” activity.

The National Pharmacy Association said the outage was delaying prescriptions by affecting pharmacies’ communication with doctors’ offices. Microsoft said that traffic was being gradually restored, with improvements in key customer scenarios, and that recovery actions had been completed across portions of the affected infrastructure in the Asia Pacific region.

It said the focus was now on extending recovery across affected infrastructure in other regions. “The Court is aware of the global outage affecting Microsoft systems. The Court is currently not receiving emails, but the Portal and contact forms are still functioning as normal.

Parties and members of the public may not receive email notifications,” the Supreme Court of the U.K. tweeted. Citing Germany’s approach, FOSS United CEO Poruri said the country had allowed individual regions to choose their email service providers, many of which use established free and open-source software.

India should adopt a similar approach instead of relying on a single provider, he said. Referring to the migration of government email services from the National Informatics Centre (NIC) to Zoho, he cautioned against replacing dependence on one provider with dependence on another.