Microsoft’s global service disruption continued into Friday, 13 November, with the technology giant acknowledging that its latest attempts to restore normal operations were not producing the expected results.

The outage, which began on Thursday, has affected Outlook, Teams, Copilot and several Microsoft 365 services, disrupting businesses, government agencies, schools and healthcare organisations across multiple continents.

We’re investigating reports of users experiencing issues accessing Exchange Online mailboxes through multiple connection methods in the Americas. More details can be found in the Microsoft 365 admin center under EX1550543.

— Microsoft 365 Status (@MSFT365Status) November 12, 2026

In its latest update, Microsoft said changes introduced to improve service availability had failed to work as anticipated. Engineers are now pursuing alternative measures to increase capacity and address persistent imbalances in network traffic.

The company has also identified a process responsible for establishing secure connections on affected servers that becomes overwhelmed, preventing those servers from processing requests. A configuration change is being prepared to address the problem, while Microsoft is also reversing a recent update that appears to coincide with the beginning of the disruption. The Guardian+1

Microsoft’s outage reports on November 12 reached 74 countries and territories in about an hour on Downdetector. Microsoft says its Exchange Online incident began at 16:17 UTC. Reports to Downdetector about Outlook began climbing at about 17:25 UTC, 12:25 in New York. By 18:25, reports about five Microsoft services combined reached 19,650 a minute, against <15 a minute on an average Thursday. Outlook reports alone peaked at more than 2,000 times their normal level. Reports did not stay in the Americas. They jumped tenfold in the UK at 17:43, in India at 23:21 local time and in New Zealand at 06:55 local time. Between 17:00 and 18:55 UTC, nearly 3 in 10 reports came from outside the US. We count a country here once its reports reach ten times normal and at least 20 in five minutes. Reports about Microsoft 365, Copilot, Teams and OneDrive each rose more than a hundredfold, and Azure about a hundredfold. Xbox, GitHub and LinkedIn, also Microsoft’s, rose far less. Microsoft said a portion of its infrastructure was experiencing elevated load across multiple regions. At 19:38 UTC, reports were still running at more than 11,000 a minute.

— Downdetector (@downdetector) November 12, 2026

Recovery efforts suffer fresh setbacks

Although Microsoft initially reported signs of recovery after restarting affected servers and redirecting traffic, its latest assessments indicate that the restoration process remains unstable.

Some servers successfully brought back online have subsequently become unresponsive when normal traffic resumes, complicating attempts to restore services fully.

According to an update reported by The Guardian at 03:19 GMT on Friday, Microsoft acknowledged that the changes implemented to improve service availability were not working as expected.

The company said it was exploring alternative technical measures to restore sufficient capacity while managing the uneven distribution of traffic across its infrastructure.

Earlier, engineers had successfully returned a number of servers to service, with those systems initially remaining stable. However, the company warned that users might experience only gradual improvements as their applications attempted to reconnect.

No definitive timetable for full restoration has been announced. The Guardian+1

🚨 JUST IN: MICROSOFT VICE CHAIR AND PRESIDENT BRAD SMITH ON RESTORING OUTLOOK SERVICES Customers and everyday users affected by the recent Exchange Online disruption, Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith offered a candid assurance that restoring full Microsoft Outlook functionality is the company’s highest operational priority. Acknowledging the frustration of stalled workflows, missed deadlines, and inaccessible inboxes, Smith emphasized that millions of organizations rely on Microsoft’s communication infrastructure as the backbone of their daily operations—a responsibility the company takes with utmost seriousness. He noted that when critical services falter, transparency and accountability must come first, assuring users that leadership is directly overseeing the response effort. Smith explained that Microsoft’s global engineering and incident response teams are working around the clock to isolate the underlying infrastructure bottleneck, stabilize affected data centers, and safely reroute traffic to restore normal email delivery. Rather than rushing a temporary patch that could risk data integrity or trigger secondary instability, engineers are methodically verifying each stage of the recovery process to ensure messages, calendars, and queued communications return intact. He reiterated that user data remains secure throughout the disruption and encouraged administrators and individuals to follow official service health updates as gradual restoration rolls out across regions. Concluding his fictional remarks, Smith thanked customers for their patience and pledged a thorough post-incident review once full stability is achieved. He stressed that every service interruption provides hard-won lessons that drive stronger architectural safeguards, deeper redundancy, and improved resilience across the entire Microsoft 365 ecosystem. Until every affected inbox is back online, Smith assured users that Microsoft’s engineering teams will not rest until full service is completely and reliably restored. Microsoft Teams 3G Giants Cam Skattebo アウトルック Excel ジェイソン システム障害 オールラウンドチーム SharePoint コパイロット オールラウンドチー Office365 OneDrive Signal

— vizmas 🤍 (@vizmas23) November 13, 2026

More than 130,000 Outlook complaints as disruption spreads across 74 countries

The scale of the outage became apparent on Thursday afternoon, when Downdetector recorded an extraordinary surge in complaints about Microsoft’s services.

Reports concerning Outlook alone exceeded 130,000 in the United States at approximately 1pm Eastern Time, while other monitoring figures placed the peak at close to 140,000.

The volume of reports was more than 2,000 times higher than normal levels, with incidents recorded across 74 countries and territories within approximately one hour.

Although complaints gradually declined, tens of thousands of users continued to report problems several hours after the initial disruption.

We’re continuing our efforts to improve server stability to improve traffic flow. This includes adjusting traffic protocols, redistributing traffic, and applying strategic traffic blocking measures. We’re observing partial recovery across regions in which we’ve applied these adjustments; however, these actions aren’t resulting in sustained recovery, so we’re reviewing what additional actions we can take to improve overall infrastructure stability. More info under EX1550543 and MO1550821 in the Microsoft 365 admin center, as well as https://t.co/pYdahqxDv3 if the admin center is not available to you.

— Microsoft 365 Status (@MSFT365Status) November 13, 2026

At approximately 02:30 GMT on Friday, Downdetector was still recording more than 25,000 complaints concerning Outlook in the United States.

Problems also continued across the Asia-Pacific region, including Japan, Australia and India, where users began experiencing difficulties during Friday’s working day.

The figures represent reports submitted to Downdetector rather than the total number of individuals affected. Reuters+2

Government agencies, schools and healthcare services affected

The outage has extended well beyond individual Microsoft users, disrupting the operations of public authorities and major organisations.

In the United States, the House of Representatives confirmed that its users had been affected and that technical teams were working with Microsoft to address the problems.

Australia was among the countries experiencing significant disruption, with the country’s federal police and intelligence agencies affected.

Government departments, schools, courts and public service organisations also reported difficulties accessing essential systems.

In New South Wales, the government service agency Service NSW advised customers to postpone visits to its service centres where possible because certain transactions were unavailable.

Healthcare organisations also experienced administrative problems.

The Australian Medical Association said some hospitals and clinics had encountered difficulties accessing email-dependent systems, including authentication services used for prescribing software.

However, medical representatives stressed that patient care had not been affected and alternative procedures remained available.

The disruption also prompted the Victorian government to warn residents about fraudsters potentially exploiting the outage through suspicious messages and telephone calls. The Guardian+1

Microsoft identifies possible technical cause, rules out indications of cyberattack

Microsoft initially attributed the connectivity problems to unusually high loads on its infrastructure across multiple regions.

The company subsequently clarified that the additional strain was not caused by an unexpected increase in overall user traffic.

Instead, numerous servers had suddenly become unavailable, forcing the remaining infrastructure to handle workloads beyond its normal capacity.

Further investigations identified problems with processes responsible for monitoring server health and establishing secure connections.

Microsoft is now testing configuration adjustments and reversing a recent change that appears to be linked to the onset of the disruption.

Australian Home Affairs and Cyber Security Minister Tony Burke said Microsoft did not believe the incident was the result of a cyberattack.

According to Burke, the company suspected a malfunction associated with a software update, drawing comparisons with the CrowdStrike incident of 2024, which caused widespread disruption to computer systems worldwide.

The precise underlying cause has not yet been definitively established. The Guardian+2

Microsoft says attempts to fix global outage not going "as expected" – follow live https://t.co/JekCrly4Za

— BBC News (World) (@BBCWorld) November 13, 2026

Which Microsoft services are affected?

The problems have primarily centred on Exchange Online, Microsoft’s cloud-based email infrastructure, which supports Outlook and provides email, calendar, contact and task-management services.

Users have reported being unable to send or receive emails, open their inboxes or access certain calendar information.

The disruption has also affected Microsoft Teams, SharePoint Online, Microsoft 365 Copilot and Microsoft Defender XDR.

Additional complaints have concerned OneDrive, Word, Excel, PowerPoint and the Microsoft Store.

However, Microsoft clarified that not every function of these applications had stopped working.

Features dependent on Exchange Online were particularly vulnerable, while others that did not rely on the affected systems remained operational.

An earlier Teams incident affecting North America was resolved on Thursday, although some users continued to experience connectivity problems linked to the wider disruption. BleepingComputer+2

OpenAI and Anthropic also affected by Microsoft’s outage

The disruption has also affected services operated by other major technology companies that depend on Microsoft’s infrastructure.

OpenAI reported problems involving Microsoft connectors, warning that new connections might fail and that certain tools were not functioning as expected.

Anthropic similarly confirmed difficulties with its Microsoft 365 connector, attributing them to an issue involving an external service provider.

The consequences extended to the corporate sector, where American electric truck manufacturer Workhorse Group postponed the publication of its third-quarter financial results from 12 November to 16 November, citing business disruption caused by the outage.

The incident has renewed attention on the dependence of businesses and public institutions on a relatively small number of global cloud infrastructure providers. Reuters+1

Social media users respond with memes and jokes about the Outlook blackout

Despite the disruption to workplaces worldwide, the prolonged outage also triggered a wave of humorous posts on social media.

Microsoft Headquarters right now…… https://t.co/5K4970bLRx

— Spitfire (@RealSpitfire) November 12, 2026

One widely shared meme featured a scene from the 2002 music video for Nelly and Kelly Rowland’s song Dilemma, in which Rowland appears to type a message into a spreadsheet.

“Since Outlook is down, it’s time to be like Kelly Rowland and start sending emails through Excel,” one X user joked.

The post attracted approximately 23,000 likes and nearly 3,000 reposts.

🚨BREAKING: "ELON MUSK JUST TROLLED MICROSOFT OVER THE MASSIVE OUTLOOK MELTDOWN AND HIS PITCH TO MOVE CORPORATE EMAIL TO STARLING AND SPACEX’S ORBITAL CLOUD HAS X GOING WILD. 🚀🛰️👇" 🗣️ Honestly, watching Earth-bound legacy cloud servers trip over their own automated health checks is pretty wild—especially when you have over 130,000 people locked out of their inboxes at once. When a single software hiccup on the ground can freeze Outlook, Teams, and Copilot across entire continents, it shows just how fragile traditional terrestrial data centers really are. This is exactly why SpaceX and Starlink are doubling down on pairing low-Earth orbit satellite connectivity with next-gen, AI-managed cloud infrastructure. By integrating optical laser links directly between satellites and building out high-capacity compute systems like Colossus alongside orbital data networks, we are creating a resilient backbone that doesn’t depend on single points of failure on the ground. Our goal is to deliver continuous, ultra-low-latency enterprise cloud services where traffic reroutes seamlessly at the speed of light—no manual server restarts required. Maybe it’s finally time to move corporate email off the ground and into low-Earth orbit! 😂🛰️" #Microsoft Outlook Microsoft M365 EBIDAN 画像20枚 pence Salim アウトルック #セブンイレブンで発見たまごっち ジェイソン

— vizmas 🤍 (@vizmas23) November 13, 2026

American property company Surmont joined the conversation on Instagram, commenting: “Days like today remind you that your entire job is just sending emails.”

Others wondered whether the unexpected interruption might provide a legitimate excuse to abandon work altogether.

“If Outlook doesn’t come back, are we legally entitled to take the rest of the week off?” one user asked.

For Microsoft, however, the immediate challenge remains considerably more serious: restoring stable access to essential business and government services while ensuring that servers brought back online do not fail again under renewed demand.