On 12 November 2026, Microsoft experienced a widespread outage impacting several of its core services, including Outlook, Teams, and Copilot. Users across multiple countries reported difficulties accessing these platforms, with disruptions spreading rapidly. Microsoft acknowledged the issue and initiated recovery measures, but initial attempts to restore full functionality did not proceed as planned. The outage affected both individual and enterprise users, causing significant interruptions to communication and productivity worldwide.
According to The Indian Express, Microsoft confirmed that its efforts to resolve the outage were “not going as expected.” The company stated that Teams, Outlook, and Copilot were among the services most severely affected, and that engineers were actively working to identify alternative solutions to restore normal operations.
As reported by The Guardian, Microsoft communicated through its official channels that changes applied to improve serviceability had not produced the desired results. The company indicated it was exploring additional workstreams to address persistent traffic management imbalances and increase system capacity.
“We’ve monitored the status of the changes applied to improve serviceability and confirmed that change is not taking as expected,” Microsoft stated in an update.
Initial explanations provided clarified that the outage was not triggered by a surge in user traffic. Instead, several servers became unexpectedly unavailable, which placed additional strain on the remaining infrastructure and led to widespread connectivity issues. Microsoft reported that the problem affected users in at least 74 countries and territories, with Outlook experiencing the highest number of incident reports.
Efforts to mitigate the impact included redirecting connection traffic across Microsoft’s global infrastructure and pausing ongoing deployments. The company also began restarting affected servers and implemented an alternative method for checking server health, which allowed some systems to return to service as recovery progressed.
Further updates indicated that Microsoft was preparing automated systems to detect and restart unresponsive servers, aiming to maintain service stability while broader fixes were applied. The company has not yet identified the root cause of the server health-check failures but continues to monitor affected systems and provide updates through its Microsoft 365 admin center.
Users and administrators were advised to follow official channels for the latest information, as Microsoft’s technical teams worked to restore full service. The company reiterated its commitment to resolving the outage and minimizing disruption for all affected customers as updates became available.
Note: This article is produced using AI-assisted tools and is based on publicly available information. It has been reviewed by The Quint's editorial team before publishing.