Kumar Bahukhandi
Microsoft signage on a building exterior. An outage disrupted Outlook, Teams and other Microsoft 365 services on 12 November 2026. (File Image)
Nearly 130,000 Outlook problem reports were logged around the peak in the United States, with disruptions also reported in India, Australia and Japan.
Key Highlights
- Outlook users reported problems opening inboxes and sending or receiving email. Microsoft also flagged connectivity issues across several Microsoft 365 services.
- Microsoft rerouted traffic and brought some servers back online, but engineers found that some of those servers stopped responding again after they began handling traffic.
- The disruption affected government and business operations and reached the Microsoft 365 connectors used by ChatGPT and Claude.
CHICAGO: A widespread Microsoft 365 outage disrupted email and workplace applications on Thursday, 12 November, leaving some Outlook users unable to open their inboxes, send messages or receive mail. Problems also surfaced in Teams and Copilot. The disruption continued into Friday morning in Asia, with reports from India, Australia and Japan as Microsoft worked to restore capacity.
Outlook bears the brunt of the disruption
Reports of Outlook problems climbed to around 130,000 in the United States shortly after 1 pm Eastern time on Thursday, according to figures from outage tracker Downdetector cited by the Associated Press and Reuters. Reuters reported that more than 25,000 Outlook problem reports were still being logged at 9.30 pm Eastern time, or 8 am on Friday in India. Those figures reflect reports submitted to the tracker. The total number of affected customers remains unknown.
Microsoft’s investigation focused on Exchange Online, the cloud service that hosts business mailboxes. A service advisory indicated that users could have difficulty reaching the same mailbox through Outlook on the web, desktop email software and mobile synchronisation. The wider incident also affected access to services including Teams, SharePoint Online and Microsoft 365 Copilot. Microsoft reported an earlier restoration of Teams in North America, while reports of connectivity problems continued during the broader disruption.
Why recovery took hours
Microsoft said some servers became unavailable after failing automated health checks, leaving parts of its infrastructure under heavier load. Engineers redirected connections to alternative routes and began returning affected servers to service. The company reported limited improvement in some regions as users’ apps gradually reconnected.
The recovery hit a setback when some restarted servers initially appeared healthy and then became unresponsive once they began receiving traffic. Microsoft temporarily restricted certain types of traffic in selected locations while its engineers examined diagnostic data. It also began testing an earlier software configuration on a subset of affected servers. The updates available on Friday morning in India showed partial recovery, with Microsoft yet to confirm full restoration. u
Governments and businesses report disruption
The US House of Representatives said the outage affected its users and that its engineers were working with Microsoft. In Japan, Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Masanao Ozaki said the disruption had affected government IT infrastructure and that officials were monitoring developments. In the private sector, US electric truck maker Workhorse Group moved its quarterly results announcement from 12 to 16 November, citing business disruption caused by the outage.
The outage also affected tools that draw information from Microsoft 365. OpenAI said it was investigating errors that could prevent users from setting up new Microsoft connections or using connected tools as expected. Anthropic identified a problem with an upstream provider affecting its Microsoft 365 connector. For users who had linked those tools to their workplace accounts, the connector problems could interrupt access to information stored in Microsoft services.
