Microsoft 365 users faced widespread connectivity problems on Thursday, Nov. 12, 2026, as Outlook, Teams and other services struggled across multiple regions. Initial complaints centered on people who could not access email in Outlook, but the disruption soon reached more parts of Microsoft’s online suite.
Downdetector showed reports beginning to spike shortly after noon Eastern. By 12:55 p.m. ET, 22,323 users had reported Microsoft 365 outages. Outlook had nearly 83,000 reports just before 1 p.m., while Teams had 2,000 and Copilot had 4,400.
The number continued to climb. Just after 1 p.m., nearly 130,000 users were reporting problems accessing Outlook, and Downdetector recorded more than 100,000 reported outages around 1:30 p.m. Eastern. The issue later showed up among users in the United Kingdom, with reports spiking there around 18:30 GMT.
Several Microsoft 365 services were affected
Microsoft’s status information named Exchange Online, Microsoft Teams, SharePoint Online, Microsoft Copilot 365 and Microsoft Defender XDR among the services that may be impacted. The status report pointed to the Business and Enterprise tiers of Microsoft 365, but individual users also reported trouble.
Outlook users faced problems through several connection methods, including Outlook on the web, the messaging API, Exchange ActiveSync and representational state transfer. Microsoft said users in the Americas were having trouble accessing Exchange Online mailboxes through those methods, while the wider issue could affect Microsoft 365 connectivity “in any region.”
At the time of the outage, many Engadget staff members could not load Microsoft’s service status page either. Microsoft’s support account on X acknowledged the disruption, and Microsoft 365 Status directed administrators to the Microsoft 365 admin center for more information under EX1550543.
Microsoft traced the issue to unavailable servers
Microsoft said it was investigating an issue affecting multiple Microsoft 365 services and found “elevated load” across infrastructure in multiple regions. The company said that load was contributing to the connectivity errors, then began restarting and repairing affected parts of the infrastructure to restore capacity.
Microsoft first reviewed whether an unexpected increase in a specific type of service traffic was adding to the load. In a later update, however, the company said the elevated load was not caused by higher traffic. Instead, a number of servers had become unexpectedly unavailable, which placed more strain on the servers that remained online.
The company also evaluated ways to redirect traffic to alternate infrastructure to speed up relief. Microsoft later said it was “testing a configuration” as part of its response, after finding that the configuration was “causing servers to fail automated health checks and become unavailable.” All affected servers had been restarted.
Outlook saw the largest wave of reports
Although Outlook drew the largest number of outage reports, the incident reached well beyond email. Teams users reported problems, and Microsoft’s AI software Copilot also appeared among the affected services. SharePoint Online, Microsoft Defender XDR and Exchange Online were included in the service status information as well.
The pattern gave users a broad view of the disruption: some could not reach their mailboxes, while others encountered connectivity problems across Microsoft 365 tools. Microsoft said it was working to mitigate the impact and continued to provide updates through the Microsoft 365 admin center.
The outage affected users in the United States, the Americas, the United Kingdom and other regions around the world. Microsoft’s investigation focused on restoring server capacity, repairing infrastructure and keeping affected services available as the company worked through the connectivity problems.
Based on
- Multiple Microsoft 365 services are experiencing an outage — engadget.com
- Microsoft reports widespread Outlook outages in United States – UPI.com — upi.com
- Is Outlook down? Widespread outage hits Microsoft apps — apnews.com
- A Microsoft 365 outage is hitting users in regions around the world – National | Globalnews.ca — globalnews.ca
- Microsoft outage sees Teams, Outlook and Copilot suffer ‘connectivity issues’ — bbc.com
