Microsoft 365 and Outlook outage, 13 November 2026: live updates

Last updated: 18:05 GMT, 13 Nov 2026

Microsoft 365 and Outlook were widely disrupted from Thursday afternoon. Microsoft now says it is seeing broad recovery and stability across its services, has addressed the underlying issue, and is still restoring service for remaining customers and regions. Its public status page still reports a service degradation, and it has not yet marked the incident as resolved.

Latest updates

18:05 GMT Microsoft said on its status account it is "deeply sorry for the disruption this incident has caused our customers and partners" and is "seeing broad recovery and stability across our services". It said: "This was a technical issue not related to cyber or AI / agents. The incident was introduced by an issue during an earlier network capacity upgrade that surfaced following a recent network change. We have addressed the underlying issue and continue to restore service to remaining customers and regions." It added that, given the scale of demand, it "restored services gradually, validating stability at each stage", and that it will provide a full post-incident report once its review is complete. A matching Microsoft 365 service-health update under incident MO1550821 was reported at 17:57 GMT by Cloud Admin Hub and Tech Weather. The public status page still shows a service degradation. The issue is not yet marked resolved.

16:07 GMT Microsoft's public status page still shows a service degradation. A fuller Microsoft 365 service-health update under incident MO1550821, as reported by official-status monitors including Cloud Admin Hub and Tech Weather, said: "We remain focused on addressing residual impact and ensuring reliable service restoration. We continue to assess recovery across various connection methods and are closely monitoring service health to verify sustained stability." It again said it has "no evidence of malicious activity associated with this incident", and that it will "continue to treat this with urgency until full mitigation" and will share a full Post-Incident Report, with the root cause, after mitigation is complete. The issue is not yet marked resolved.

15:39 GMT Microsoft said on its status account it is "seeing encouraging recovery progress, with service availability and email delivery performance improving across a growing portion of affected infrastructure". It added: "We know our customers rely on our services to get important work done every day, and regret the impact these outages had on those who depend on us." It again confirmed "there is no indication this is the result of malicious or cyber activity", and said its teams "are reviewing what happened and how we can prevent similar issues going forward". The public status page still shows a service degradation. The issue is not yet marked resolved.

14:17 GMT Microsoft said on its status account it is "continuing to see improvements in service availability, with email queues significantly reduced and approaching normal levels". "Some users may still experience intermittent access issues or delayed email delivery as recovery continues." It added: "We've implemented additional mitigation measures, are restoring remaining affected infrastructure, and are investigating residual service issues while closely monitoring service health and validating recovery across affected connection methods." The public status page still shows a service degradation. The issue is not yet marked resolved.

13:32 GMT Microsoft said on its status account it is "seeing continued recovery progress across affected regions, with broader improvements in North America, sustained improvements across much of Europe, and encouraging recovery signals in Asia Pacific". "Some users may still experience intermittent access issues or delayed email delivery as mitigation continues across remaining affected infrastructure." Its "focus remains on stabilizing recovered infrastructure, completing mitigation in remaining impacted areas, and reducing delayed email queues and backlogs while we validate service consistency across connection methods". A fuller update is under incident MO1550821. The public status page still shows a service degradation. The issue is not yet marked resolved.

12:09 GMT Microsoft said on its status account it is "seeing encouraging recovery progress, with service availability and email delivery performance improving across a growing portion of affected Microsoft 365 infrastructure". "Some users may still experience intermittent issues as recovery actions continue." It is "focused on recovery for the remaining affected environments while prioritizing email queue and backlog reduction". The "extended 48-hour email timeout window remains in place to help protect delayed messages as delivery catches up". The public status page still shows a service degradation. The issue is not yet marked resolved.

11:11 GMT Microsoft said on its status account it has "made additional progress toward recovery, with actions now completed across portions of affected infrastructure and traffic being gradually restored". It is "seeing improvements in key scenarios, including mailbox access and delayed email processing, though some intermittent issues may continue". Its focus is "extending these recovery actions across remaining affected infrastructure while continuing stabilization and adding capacity to improve consistency". The public status page still shows a service degradation. The issue is not yet marked resolved.

10:28 GMT Microsoft said on its status account that recovery is "ongoing across affected Microsoft 365 infrastructure and progressing in phases". It is "seeing incremental improvement in several workloads, but service health remains variable and capacity has not yet fully returned to baseline". To protect delayed mail, it has "extended the email timeout window to 48 hours while queue and backlog processing continues". The public status page still shows a service degradation. The issue is not yet marked resolved.

09:24 GMT Microsoft said on its status account it is "seeing early stabilization and capacity improvements as recovery actions continue", and that, "to help preserve delayed mail during this event", it has "extended email timeout to 48 hours". A fuller update on its status page, last updated at 09:14 GMT, still lists a service degradation. Microsoft said recovery is ongoing: there are "early signs of stabilization", but capacity "has not yet returned to normal levels" and service health "remains variable" as traffic is carefully put back. It is taking affected systems out of service, restarting and repairing them, then bringing them back in stages, and is looking at further steps to recover more quickly and consistently. In plain terms, the 48-hour email timeout means emails sent to you that are delayed should be held and retried for up to 48 hours rather than bouncing, so most delayed mail should still arrive. Microsoft again said it is "not aware of any malicious activity causing this incident", and that it will publish a full Post-Incident Report, with the root cause, after recovery is complete. The issue is not yet marked resolved.

07:44 GMT Microsoft said on its status account it is "seeing positive results for service stability and increased capacity" from its latest traffic changes, and is applying those changes "more broadly across affected regions as we seek to attain persistent recovery". A few minutes earlier, at 07:29 GMT, a Microsoft 365 service health update, quoted by the Guardian and NBC News, said those "positive results for server stability" came after it applied "an upstream authentication/routing configuration component patch" to part of its infrastructure, which it was working to expand. In the same update Microsoft said it is "not aware of any malicious activity that is causing this incident", and that once the issue is mitigated it will provide "full details of the root cause, defense-in-depth repair items, and more within a Post-Incident Report". The issue is not yet marked resolved. Administrators can find a fuller update under incident MO1550821 in the Microsoft 365 admin centre, or on the public status page.

From about 07:30 GMT We've seen Outlook mail and calendar fail to load, or time out, on two separate Microsoft 365 tenants we look after. Sign-in itself still worked.

Around 07:00 GMT Downdetector was still showing a high volume of Outlook reports. The BBC said there were about 43,000 reports globally, across 72 countries, at around 07:00 GMT. That is down from a peak of nearly 140,000 at around 18:00 GMT on Thursday.

06:12 GMT Microsoft said it was still "continuing to work on recovering our frontend servers" and making further traffic changes. (status account)

04:36 GMT Microsoft reported "partial recovery" in some regions, but said those actions were "not resulting in sustained recovery". (status account)

03:37 GMT Charles Lamanna, a Microsoft executive vice-president, said there is "no indication this is the result of malicious or cyber activity". (his post)

03:13 GMT Microsoft said the changes it had already applied were "not taking as expected". (status account)

19:31 GMT, 12 November Microsoft said the "elevated load" was not caused by a sudden increase in traffic, but by "a number of servers being unexpectedly unavailable", which put extra strain on the servers that were still working. (status account)

17:54 GMT, 12 November Microsoft first said it was investigating problems accessing Exchange Online mailboxes, initially in the Americas. At 18:07 GMT it confirmed the issue may affect Microsoft 365 connectivity "for users in any region". (first post, follow-up)

What's affected

Microsoft's public status page currently shows a service degradation: "Users may be unable to connect to multiple Microsoft 365 services." The main impact is on Outlook mail and calendars (Exchange Online), and on other Microsoft 365 features that rely on those email services. Email delivery may also be delayed. Features that do not need Exchange may still work.

We've seen mail and calendar access fail this morning on two separate tenants, while sign-in continued to work. Teams and Copilot have also been widely reported as affected; some people have still been able to use Teams chat and meetings, but this has not been the same for everyone. Microsoft's Azure status currently reports no issues.

Not every organisation is affected in the same way. Microsoft says it has addressed the underlying issue and is still restoring service for remaining customers and regions. Its public status page still shows a service degradation, and it has not yet marked the incident as resolved.

What you can do meanwhile

• If you use the Outlook desktop app, you should still be able to read mail it has already downloaded, and you may be able to write messages to send later.

• Don't assume a delayed email is lost. Microsoft is holding and retrying delayed mail for up to 48 hours; ask senders to resend only if it's urgent.

• Check Microsoft's service status page and the @MSFT365Status account for official updates. The incident references are EX1550543 (Exchange Online) and MO1550821 (Microsoft 365 more widely).

• Don't keep resetting passwords. From what we've seen, sign-in itself is still working; the problem is reaching mail and calendars once you're in. A password reset is unlikely to help and just adds hassle.

• For anything urgent, use the phone. Some Teams chats and meetings have continued to work, but don't rely on that being the case for everyone.

If you're a customer and need a hand in the meantime, get in touch.