Microsoft 365’s Global Outage Dragged into Friday, and Outlook Email Is Still Unreliable
by Sari Moon · Thought CatalogBy Sari Moon
Updated 34 minutes ago, November 13, 2026
Outlook email remained unreliable in some regions on Friday, November 13, as Microsoft worked to restore Microsoft 365 services after a worldwide outage that began around noon to 1 p.m. ET Thursday.
Recovery varied by region. Parts of Europe and Japan saw improvement by early Friday, while other areas continued to experience intermittent service.
Outlook and Exchange Online email were among the hardest services to restore. Teams, Copilot, SharePoint and OneDrive were also affected.
Microsoft traced the disruption to infrastructure inside its own network. Servers failed automated health checks and were taken out of service, leaving the remaining machines struggling with the extra demand. The company identified a recent network configuration change as a contributing factor and began reversing it.
Some servers initially recovered, then stopped responding when traffic returned. Microsoft also said the process used to establish secure connections had become overwhelmed. The company said it found no evidence of malicious activity and ruled out a cyberattack.
Downdetector reports reached roughly 130,000 to 140,000 across about 74 countries. Microsoft 365 has more than 450 million commercial subscriptions, though that figure doesn’t establish how many customers experienced the outage.
The disruption affected businesses, schools and government agencies, and some workers left early. With email delivery delayed, Microsoft temporarily increased email timeouts to help keep messages from being lost.
Microsoft described recovery progress as “encouraging” or “marginal” while mitigation continued. It said it would publish a full post-incident report once the issue was resolved.
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