A widespread Microsoft Outlook outage disrupted email access for businesses and consumers on November 12, 2026. The disruption spread beyond the Americas, affecting Microsoft 365 services worldwide, including Teams, SharePoint, Copilot and OneDrive.
Microsoft identified unexpectedly unavailable servers as a major factor. The company reported partial recovery but had not confirmed full restoration.
Microsoft Outlook Outage Affects Multiple Services
Microsoft initially reported Exchange Online problems in the Americas before confirming wider disruptions across multiple regions.
Users had trouble accessing Outlook inboxes, sending messages, and using Microsoft 365 applications. Teams, SharePoint, Copilot and Defender XDR were also affected.
Server Failures Trigger Recovery Efforts
Microsoft said numerous servers unexpectedly became unavailable, reducing system capacity. In an official update, the company explained that it was redistributing connection traffic across its global infrastructure.
Engineers began restoring affected servers, although some became unresponsive again when traffic returned. Microsoft continued investigating the underlying cause.
Previous Microsoft 365 Outage
The incident follows a September 2026 Microsoft 365 outage that lasted several days. Microsoft attributed that disruption to a core authentication configuration problem.
Unlike September’s incident, the latest outage involves unexpected server availability failures. Microsoft has not published a final root-cause analysis.
The company continues monitoring recovery efforts. Administrators can follow incident EX1550543 and MO1550821 through the Microsoft 365 admin center. A confirmed restoration time has not been announced.
