Microsoft’s global outage affecting Outlook, Exchange Online and other Microsoft 365 services continued into Friday, November 13, after disrupting users for several hours on Thursday. Nearly 1.3 lakh users reported problems with Outlook at the peak of the disruption on Downdetector, according to reports by The Times of India and the Associated Press. Users reported being unable to open inboxes, sign in, send emails or receive messages.
The disruption was not limited to Outlook. Microsoft Teams, Copilot and other Microsoft 365 services that depend on shared connectivity infrastructure also experienced problems. Microsoft said the issue could affect service connectivity in any region.
Outlook outage: What happened?
The outage began on Thursday, November 12, with a sharp rise in reports from users trying to access Outlook. Downdetector recorded nearly 130,000 reports shortly after 1 pm Eastern Time (around 11:30 pm IST). The number of reports later declined, but users continued to report problems as Microsoft’s recovery efforts extended into Friday.
The Times of India reported that around 60,000 users were still reporting Outlook issues at about 3 pm Eastern Time. The figure represents reports submitted to an outage tracker, not a confirmed count of unique affected customers.
Microsoft’s explanation and recovery efforts
Microsoft said a portion of its infrastructure was experiencing elevated load across multiple regions, contributing to connectivity errors. The company also identified servers that had become unexpectedly unavailable after failing automated health checks.
Microsoft paused deployments, redirected traffic away from affected infrastructure and restarted impacted servers. It tested an alternative health-check method to bring some servers back online. However, recovery did not progress as expected: a Reuters report published on Friday said the disruption had lasted around 10 hours and Microsoft was exploring alternative ways to restore capacity.
Users in India also reported problems
Reports of a fresh spike in Outlook issues appeared in India on Friday morning, after complaints had eased overnight. Gadgets 360 reported that Downdetector recorded a second rise in India at around 8:59 am, with more than 2,200 reports at that point. Users described login failures, delayed or undelivered emails and problems with the Outlook mobile app and web version.
Microsoft’s incident notice said connectivity to other Microsoft 365 services in any region could also be affected. Depending on the services used, organisations may have experienced issues with Teams, SharePoint, OneDrive and other applications connected to Exchange Online.
Was the outage caused by a cyberattack?
There was no indication of a cyberattack in the Microsoft statements and reporting reviewed for this article. The company described infrastructure load and server availability problems as the immediate technical issues. The precise underlying cause had not been fully established in the updates cited here.
What should Outlook and Microsoft 365 users do?
- Check the Microsoft 365 service health dashboard through your organisation’s administrator for the latest incident status.
- For urgent communication, use an approved alternative channel until email service is stable.
- Avoid repeatedly resetting passwords if the problem is a wider service outage rather than an account-specific login issue.
- After recovery, verify whether important messages were sent, received or remain in the Outbox.
- Businesses should confirm that automated email workflows and integrations have resumed normally.
Latest status
Microsoft was continuing recovery work in the latest reports reviewed for this update. Service restoration may be gradual as capacity returns and email clients reconnect. Users should rely on Microsoft’s official service-health updates rather than assuming that a reduction in Downdetector reports means every account is working normally.
Sources
- The Times of India: Microsoft Outlook outage hits thousands globally, November 13, 2026
- Reuters: Microsoft outage drags on for hours, disrupting Outlook and Teams
- Associated Press report via Mint: Widespread outage hits Microsoft email and other apps
- Gadgets 360: Outlook and Microsoft 365 outage in India and globally
Update: This article has been refreshed on November 13, 2026, with reports of continuing disruption, the second spike in India and Microsoft’s latest recovery efforts. Downdetector figures are user-submitted reports and should not be read as verified unique-user totals.
