Outlook outage persists as Microsoft works to restore email service
Microsoft’s Outlook and its Copilot AI assistant were still unstable on Friday, November 13, 2026, more than 12 hours after the failure began. Downdetector recorded 72,392 failure reports for Outlook alone by 10:50 p.m. on Thursday (12), while Microsoft confirmed that the disruption could hit Microsoft 365 connectivity worldwide.
The first complaints appeared around 2:30 p.m. on Thursday and grew quickly through the afternoon. By 4:15 p.m., Downdetector had logged 30,073 error reports for Outlook, a number that more than doubled in six hours. Later data from US outlets showed Outlook reports peaking near 130,000, while Microsoft said its first recovery measures were not enough to restore the whole operation.
Seven other Microsoft products show error reports
The Downdetector survey also pointed to simultaneous error reports on seven other products from the company. Among them are the following services.
- Microsoft 365, the productivity suite that replaced the old Microsoft Office
- Microsoft Store, the official app and game store
- Microsoft Copilot, the artificial intelligence platform
- Microsoft Teams, the messaging and video conferencing app
- Microsoft OneDrive, the cloud file storage service
- Microsoft Account, the login and profile management system
- Microsoft Azure, the corporate cloud computing infrastructure
Microsoft traces the failure to Exchange Online servers
Microsoft acknowledged the outage in a post on its official profile on X and filed the incident under code EX1550543 in the Microsoft 365 admin center. At first, the company linked the failure to connection problems in the Americas. It then widened the alert after confirming that users in any region could be affected.
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“We are investigating reports of users experiencing issues accessing Exchange Online mailboxes through multiple connection methods in the Americas,” Microsoft said in an official statement. The company later changed the scope of its message on the same channel.
“While we are working to mitigate the impact, we have confirmed that the issue may affect Microsoft 365 service connectivity for users in any region,” the company added in that update.
Engineers restart servers, but recovery remains partial
To contain the drop in performance, Microsoft’s engineering team adopted containment protocols across its network. The company said in the same publication that it had suspended all updates, was redirecting more traffic away from the affected infrastructure, and was restarting servers with problems so they could return to operation.
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Microsoft said on Friday that it had found no sign of malicious activity, according to a post by its Copilot executive Charles Lamanna on X. At 7:20 a.m. Brasília time, Outlook and Copilot were still offline while Teams had already returned. The company had not disclosed the definitive technical cause or a time for full stabilization of its servers.
