Microsoft Outages – November 2026

13th Nov 2026 1:19PM

Summary and what to do now

Please do not reset your password, rebuild your Outlook profile or reinstall Office. The problem is on Microsoft’s servers, and changes on your own device will not fix it and may cause extra work once service returns.

A global Microsoft 365 outage began on Thursday 12 November and is still ongoing as of Friday at 1pm. Microsoft now reports early signs of recovery across regions, but server capacity is still below normal and service remains patchy. Outlook and email are the most affected, and Microsoft has not given a time for full recovery. Teams calls, chats and meetings are largely working, so use Teams, phone and text for urgent contact until email is stable.

This update reflects public information available at around 13:00 GMT on Friday 13th November. We will send a further update when Microsoft confirms recovery or the picture changes materially.

What has happened

In the UK, outage reports began rising at around 18:15 on Thursday. At its peak, the tracking site Downdetector logged around 130,000 Outlook problem reports from 74 countries.

Microsoft says a large number of its servers unexpectedly became unavailable after failing automated health checks, which pushed extra load onto the remaining servers. It says the cause was a loss of capacity rather than a surge in traffic. Microsoft has stated it is not aware of any malicious activity, so this does not appear to be a cyberattack.

Overnight (UK time), Microsoft returned servers to service several times, but some failed again once traffic reached them. Microsoft has paused all deployments, moved traffic away from affected infrastructure, imposed temporary traffic limits in some locations, and begun rolling back a recent network configuration change that coincides with the start of the problem. The root cause is not yet confirmed, and Microsoft has said it will publish a full report once the incident is resolved.

Latest position (Friday early afternoon): Microsoft says it is seeing early stabilisation and capacity improvements as recovery continues in phases – something we are winessing in the accounts we look after too. We expect this position to continue to improve throughout the afternoon. Microsoft has also extended its email retry window to 48 hours so that delayed messages are held rather than lost, and says it is prioritising delivery of delayed email.

What is affected and what still works

Impact varies by person and organisation, and access may come and go during recovery. Based on Microsoft’s advisories:

• Outlook and email (Exchange Online): Mailboxes may not open in Outlook on the web, the Outlook desktop app or the Outlook mobile app. Incoming and outgoing email may be delayed. Microsoft is holding delayed messages for up to 48 hours, so they should arrive rather than be lost. Some people report email returning on phones before computers.
• Teams: Calls, meetings, group chats and channel messages are largely working. Features that rely on email and calendars are failing, including scheduling or editing meetings and sending invitations.
• Calendars: Viewing and updating calendars may fail. Keep your own note of today’s meetings if you can still see them.
• SharePoint and OneDrive: Files stored directly in SharePoint are largely working, but some users are still reporting access problems.
• Copilot: The chat may not load, or may lose access to email, calendars and files. Third-party AI tools that connect to Microsoft 365 are also affected.
• Other services: Planner, To Do and Intune (device management) are listed as affected for business customers, as are Outlook.com, OneDrive and OneNote for personal accounts.

Advice for everyone

1. Do not change anything on your device or account. Resetting passwords, removing accounts or reinstalling apps will not help, because the fault is with Microsoft.
2. Use alternative channels for anything urgent. Use Teams calls, phone or text. Let key clients and suppliers know that email replies may be delayed today.
3. Do not resend emails repeatedly. Microsoft is holding delayed messages for up to 48 hours and delivering them as capacity returns, so repeated sends can create duplicates.
4. Keep working locally where possible. Save documents to your device and sync them once service is restored.
5. Be alert to scams. Criminals often exploit outages with fake “Microsoft” emails, texts and support calls. Microsoft will not call you to fix this. Do not share passwords or approve sign-in prompts you did not start, and verify any support contact through a number you already know.
6. Expect gradual recovery. Apps may reconnect at different times. If something works and then stops, that is expected while Microsoft restores capacity.

Advice for support customers

1. Raise support requests through any of the usual channels except email. We have not made any changes to how we support you, and we will not contact you to ask you to make changes to your systems.
2. If you do not use Microsoft 365, you are not affected. Your email and calendar will continue to work, but anyone external who uses Microsoft 365 may be affected by this outage, so replies from them may be delayed.

Advice for IT administrators

1. Track the official incidents. Follow EX1550543 (mailbox access) and MO1550821 (wider impact) under Service health in the Microsoft 365 admin center. If the admin center will not load, use the public status page at status.cloud.microsoft or the Microsoft 365 Status account on X.
2. Recheck the affected service list. Microsoft has revised the list in MO1550821, so earlier summaries may be out of date.
3. Avoid tenant changes during the incident. Changes made now are hard to diagnose and will not fix a server-side fault.
4. Do not assume endpoint protection has stopped. Problems reaching the Defender XDR portal do not by themselves mean device protection or background detection is offline.
5. Review compliance controls after recovery. If you rely on Purview DLP, auto-labelling or Customer Key for Cloud PCs, confirm that no processing was delayed or skipped during the outage.
6. Prepare an out-of-band contact route. Make sure you can reach staff by phone or text if Teams and Outlook are both unavailable.

Next steps

We will issue a further updates as they come available. In the meantime, please report any urgent business impact (for example, missed deadlines or client-facing failures) by phone so we can prioritise support.