Outlook email outage affects users around the world

On Thursday, November 12, 2026, many users across the globe experienced problems with Microsoft's Outlook email service. The issue, classified as service degradation, affected users' ability to send and receive messages through multiple connection methods. Microsoft acknowledged the problem on its status website, stating that they were investigating reports of users experiencing issues accessing Exchange Online mailboxes.

Downdetector reported that users worldwide were affected by the outage, which also impacted Microsoft Teams, Copilot, and Teams. Microsoft began redistributing connection traffic across its global infrastructure to balance the load, and by 2:10 PM, the issue started to recover for some users. However, problems persisted for several hours for many others. Microsoft later confirmed that the technical issue was affecting its Microsoft 365 productivity software suite, including Outlook, Teams, and Copilot.

Government agencies and numerous companies worldwide were also impacted by the problem, leading them to use social media to provide updates to their patrons and customers. Some local governments, like the State of Michigan, reported technical issues with email and other Microsoft applications, noting that response times to emails may be delayed. This situation remains a developing story.