A major Microsoft service outage is disrupting businesses, public organisations and hundreds of thousands of users worldwide. The problems began on Thursday 12 November and are continuing today, Friday 13 November 2026, as the company works to restore services gradually.
According to Reuters and international media reports, Outlook email and Exchange Online are among the main services affected, with problems also reported in Microsoft Teams, Copilot and other Microsoft 365 applications.
Users are struggling to sign into accounts, send and receive emails and access corporate applications, affecting everyday work at major companies and government agencies.
The impact has been reported in the United States, Australia, Japan and European countries. Banks, airlines, insurers and financial businesses have encountered problems, while some companies have postponed planned financial-results announcements.
At the peak of the disruption, Downdetector recorded almost 130,000 problem reports. That figure counts user reports, rather than everyone affected.
What caused the problem?
Microsoft said the disruption involved servers that stopped responding normally because a core request-processing process became overloaded.
Technical teams restarted servers, changed traffic-management arrangements and tested rolling back previous software settings.
According to updates available so far, there is no indication that the incident was caused by a cyberattack.
Recovery has remained difficult despite corrective work, with some servers developing problems again after restarting.
By Friday lunchtime in Greece, full service restoration had not been confirmed and Microsoft was continuing work to stabilise its systems.
The prolonged outage highlights businesses’ and public services’ reliance on the online infrastructure of major technology companies. A widespread technical failure can disrupt work and communication at hundreds of organisations simultaneously.
