ع
Microsoft confirmed on November 12, 2026, that connectivity problems had struck its Microsoft 365 platform, with services including Outlook email, Teams collaboration tools and the Copilot artificial intelligence feature among those impacted. The company stated that a number of its servers had become unexpectedly unavailable, leading to elevated load on remaining infrastructure and causing widespread disruptions. According to Downdetector, reports of issues with Outlook peaked at nearly 140,000 globally that evening, though the monitoring site noted this figure likely underrepresents the full scale since it depends on voluntary user submissions.
A BBC video titled Watch: How Microsoft services went down around the world outlined how the outage unfolded overnight, detailing reports from multiple time zones as office workers arrived to find inboxes unresponsive and calendars inaccessible. CNN reported that the problems extended to governments, schools and businesses in the United States, where some city offices directed residents to use phone lines instead of email for inquiries. Al Jazeera added that in Australia and Japan, government agencies switched to paper-based processes while courts in the Philippines faced delays from the inability to access shared documents.
Microsoft explicitly ruled out a cyber-security incident as the root cause, according to statements from executive vice president Charles Lamanna on X. The company described the issue as stemming from an unexpected reduction in available servers rather than a surge in user traffic, with a process for establishing secure connections becoming overwhelmed. EL PAÍS reported that this created a domino effect across systems tied to Exchange Online, which underpins many of the affected applications including SharePoint and OneDrive.
In the United Kingdom, the outage affected National Health Service communications, police online reporting forms and some general practitioner surgeries, the BBC noted in related coverage. Greater Manchester Police and other forces advised the public to call 101 for non-emergency matters after live chat and email services faltered. Pharmacies also experienced delays in liaising with doctors, according to the National Pharmacy Association, which warned that prescription processing times could lengthen as a result.
More than 430 million people use Microsoft 365 applications worldwide, according to figures published on the company’s website, suggesting the potential reach of the disruption extended far beyond the initial Downdetector tallies. NBC News highlighted specific business consequences, including Workhorse Group postponing its quarterly earnings call due to operational interruptions from the outage. The Indian Express reported similar effects in India, Taiwan and other Asia-Pacific markets, where users encountered frozen email clients and malfunctioning cloud storage access.
By the morning of November 13, 2026, Microsoft indicated it was observing early signs of stabilization after rolling back certain network changes, though it cautioned that service capacity had not yet returned to normal levels across all regions. The company continued to post updates via its 365 status account, directing administrators to specific incident reports for technical details. Multiple outlets including Firstpost observed that while some users regained partial access, intermittent unresponsiveness persisted, particularly for features reliant on real-time synchronization.
