Microsoft Outage: Outlook and Teams Restored After Worldwide Disruption
Latest update: Saturday, 14 November 2026
Microsoft has restored its Microsoft 365 services following a major worldwide outage that disrupted Outlook emails, Microsoft Teams, Copilot and other workplace tools.
The disruption began on Thursday, 12 November, and affected millions of users across 74 countries and territories. Businesses, government departments, schools and other organisations experienced problems accessing emails and connected services.
There is now good news for users. Microsoft has confirmed that the underlying technical problem has been addressed and has marked its major service incidents as restored early on Saturday morning.
However, some users may still experience delayed emails or minor problems while systems and outstanding message queues return to normal.
Latest update: Microsoft confirms services restored
Microsoft has now marked the two main incidents affecting Exchange Online and the wider Microsoft 365 service as Service restored.
The restoration was recorded at approximately 04:15 UTC on Saturday, 14 November.
This follows almost two days of disruption, during which Microsoft engineers worked to bring affected servers back online and restore normal service across different regions.
Microsoft had previously reported broad recovery on Friday, with improving service availability across North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific.
The company also confirmed that the underlying technical issue had been addressed and apologised to customers and business partners for the disruption.
Although the major incident has been marked as restored, delayed email delivery and outstanding messages may take additional time to clear.
Current status: Resolved – Microsoft has marked the major service incidents as restored.
Users can check Microsoft's official service status page for any remaining service advisories:
When did the problems start?
The trouble began on Thursday afternoon, 12 November, at around 4pm UK time.
Within an hour, outage-tracking website Downdetector recorded reports of problems from 74 countries and territories. Microsoft publicly confirmed the wider disruption later that evening.
The outage quickly became a problem for businesses and workers across different parts of the world.
For many people, email is still one of the main ways to communicate at work. Losing access to inboxes and connected services can delay everything from customer enquiries to important business decisions.
What was affected?
The disruption affected several Microsoft services and features, including:
- Outlook: People experienced problems accessing their mailboxes, sending and receiving emails, and receiving messages on time.
- Microsoft Teams: Some features connected to email and calendars were disrupted, including meeting scheduling and certain chat functions. Core messaging and online meetings remained largely functional during parts of the incident.
- Microsoft Copilot: Some users experienced problems accessing the AI assistant and information stored in their Microsoft 365 accounts.
- SharePoint: Some features connected to email services and Microsoft 365 accounts experienced problems.
- Other Microsoft 365 tools: Services including Planner, To Do, Defender and some administrative tools also experienced disruption.
The impact extended beyond individual users.
Businesses, government departments, schools and public services in several countries reported difficulties. Some organisations had to use telephone calls and alternative communication methods while their normal email services were unavailable.
The outage demonstrated how dependent many organisations have become on a small number of major technology providers.
What caused the Microsoft outage?
Microsoft has now provided an explanation for the technical problem.
According to the company, an earlier network-capacity upgrade introduced a software-related problem. The issue remained unnoticed for several months before a later network change triggered failures.
This caused some servers to become unavailable, placing additional pressure on the remaining computer systems.
As the problem spread, Microsoft struggled to restore affected servers. Some servers that had been brought back online became unresponsive again when they started receiving normal internet traffic.
Engineers tried several recovery measures, including restarting affected servers, redirecting traffic and applying configuration changes.
A technical patch to an authentication and network-routing component eventually produced better results, allowing Microsoft to restore services gradually.
The company confirmed that the incident was not caused by a cyber attack, malicious activity or artificial intelligence.
Microsoft has apologised for the disruption and said it will publish a full post-incident report explaining what happened and what measures will be introduced to help prevent similar problems.
What should you do if you were affected?
Although Microsoft has marked the incident as restored, there are a few things worth checking if you experienced problems.
1. Check your Outlook inbox
Open Outlook and check whether your inbox is updating normally. If you were expecting important messages during the outage, check with the sender if they have not arrived.
2. Check delayed emails
Microsoft extended its email timeout window to 48 hours during the incident to help protect delayed messages. Some outstanding emails may therefore take additional time to reach their destinations.
3. Check Microsoft Teams
Try opening Teams and checking your chats, calendar and meeting schedules. If something is still not working, sign out and sign back in before trying again.
4. Be careful of scam messages
Criminals sometimes take advantage of major technology problems.
Be cautious of unexpected emails, text messages or phone calls claiming to offer an outage fix. Never share your password or follow unfamiliar links asking you to reset your Microsoft account.
5. Check official service updates
If you continue experiencing problems, visit Microsoft's official service status page:
What happens next?
The immediate disruption has been resolved, but there is still an important question about how the failure happened and why it took so long to restore normal service.
Microsoft has promised a full post-incident report covering the technical cause, the recovery process and measures intended to prevent similar problems in future.
For businesses and organisations that rely heavily on Microsoft 365, the incident is also a reminder to have alternative communication methods and backup arrangements in place.
The outage may be over, but its impact is a reminder that even widely used cloud services can experience major interruptions.
This article was updated on Saturday, 14 November 2026, following Microsoft's confirmation that the affected service incidents had been restored.
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