Microsoft outage continues as global disruption hits Outlook, Teams and Microsoft 365 services

A major global Microsoft outage is continuing to disrupt businesses and organisations, with thousands of users experiencing problems accessing Outlook, Microsoft Teams, Copilot and a range of other Microsoft 365 services.

The disruption began on Thursday, 12 November 2026, and has continued into Friday morning, with Microsoft struggling to restore normal service after its initial recovery attempts failed to deliver the expected results.

The outage has affected users across multiple countries, including the United States, Australia, Japan and parts of the Asia-Pacific region. Downdetector recorded more than 130,000 reports of Outlook problems in the United States at the height of the disruption.

Microsoft initially identified problems affecting Exchange Online, the company’s cloud-based email platform, with users reporting difficulties accessing mailboxes, sending and receiving emails and loading Outlook.

The problems subsequently spread to other Microsoft 365 services, affecting organisations that rely on Microsoft’s cloud infrastructure for everyday business operations.

Microsoft identifies infrastructure problems

Microsoft’s investigation has pointed towards problems with its server infrastructure and network configuration.

The company identified a process responsible for establishing secure connections on affected servers that was becoming overwhelmed, causing servers to stop processing requests correctly.

Microsoft also began reversing a recent network configuration change that appeared to coincide with the start of the disruption.

Initial attempts to resolve the problem involved restarting affected infrastructure and making configuration adjustments. However, Microsoft subsequently confirmed that some of its changes were not working as expected, forcing engineers to investigate alternative recovery methods. Penn Mail Services+2

Cyberattack ruled out

Microsoft has said it is not aware of any malicious activity responsible for the outage.

The company has therefore indicated that the disruption is related to infrastructure and configuration problems rather than a cybersecurity incident.

Australian Home Affairs and Cyber Security Minister Tony Burke also confirmed that Microsoft did not believe it was dealing with a cyberattack. Reuters+1

UK government monitoring the situation

The disruption has also attracted attention from the UK government, with government engineers working alongside Microsoft to assess the impact on systems and services.

Luke Pollard, Minister for Defence Readiness and Industry, said government engineers were working with Microsoft and suggested that further information about the impact on government systems would become available during Friday.

The outage has also affected government organisations overseas, including agencies in Australia and Japan. The Guardian+1

Microsoft reports signs of improvement

There are some indications that Microsoft’s recovery efforts are beginning to make progress.

In its latest reported update, Microsoft said it was seeing positive results for server stability following the application of a software patch addressing an authentication and routing configuration component.

The company is continuing to monitor the affected infrastructure and is working to extend the fix to additional servers supporting active regions.

However, Microsoft 365 was still officially reporting service degradation on Friday morning, meaning users could continue to experience problems while the recovery operation progresses. The Guardian+1

The incident highlights the dependence businesses, government departments and other organisations have on Microsoft’s cloud infrastructure. When a major component of that infrastructure fails, the consequences can extend well beyond email, affecting collaboration tools, security services, business applications and artificial intelligence platforms.

Microsoft is expected to provide a more detailed explanation of the incident once services have been fully restored.

For the latest information, users and IT administrators can monitor the Microsoft Service Health Status page