Mary Walrath-HoldridgeFernando Cervantes Jr.Thao NguyenUSA TODAY
Nov. 12, 2026Updated Nov. 13, 2026, 12:21 a.m. ET
A widespread Microsoft outage affected tens of thousands of users across the United States for about 10 hours on Nov. 12, disrupting access to Outlook, Microsoft 365, Copilot, and other essential platforms.
Microsoft said it was making progress restoring affected services, but users could continue experiencing disruptions as servers returned to operation. In an update at around 11:30 p.m. ET, the company said it was working to “improve server stability to improve traffic flow.”
“We’re observing partial recovery across regions in which we’ve applied these adjustments; however, these actions aren’t resulting in sustained recovery, so we’re reviewing what additional actions we can take to improve overall infrastructure stability,” Microsoft said in a service health notice.
More than 18,000 users were still experiencing issues with Outlook in the United States by around 11:30 p.m. ET, while over 5,000 reported issues with Microsoft 365, according to outage tracker Downdetector. Those numbers were down significantly from earlier peaks, when Outlook outage reports approached 130,000, and Microsoft 365 reports exceeded 47,000.
Downdetector also showed reported outages for several Microsoft services in several other countries, including India, Australia and Japan, early on Nov. 13 local time.
In its service health notice, Microsoft said features of Microsoft 365 services that interact with Exchange Online and email were affected, while elements that did not depend on Exchange Online remained functional. Exchange Online is the company’s cloud-based messaging platform that delivers email, calendar, contacts, and tasks.
Microsoft did not immediately respond to USA TODAY’s request for additional comment.
Microsoft’s efforts to improve serviceability ‘not taking as expected’
In an update shortly before 9 p.m. ET, the company said it was seeing “positive results with our efforts to restart affected infrastructure and recover server availability in an isolated manner.”
The company noted that it was continuing to monitor the performance of affected infrastructure but later said efforts to improve serviceability were not progressing as expected.
“We’ve monitored the status of the changes applied to improve serviceability and confirmed they’re not taking as expected,” Microsoft said in another update about an hour later. “We’re identifying alternate workstreams that can be applied to increase capacity in the face of sustained traffic management imbalances.”
Communications services at workplaces affected by outage
The outage was impacting communications and other Microsoft services used by companies and organizations around the world.
In Southern California, NBC 4 Los Angeles reported that the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department and other government agencies in the area were experiencing issues with their communications services. A message on the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner’s Office’s website states that their email was currently down “due to a nationwide Microsoft Outlook outage.”
In Arapahoe County, Colorado, which borders the city and county of Denver, the sheriff’s office said the outage was affecting online bond payments for people being held at the county detention facility.
“Because of the outage, jail officials are not receiving the email notifications needed to process online bond payments,” the sheriff’s office said in a statement on social media. “Until Outlook email is restored, anyone needing to post bond for immediate release must do so in person at the jail.”
Electric truck maker Workhorse Group was expected to report third-quarter results Nov. 12, but rescheduled it to Nov. 16 citing business disruptions caused by the global outage.
Thousands still reporting issues with Microsoft services
As Microsoft worked on bringing impacted servers back online, over 31,000 users reported issues with Outlook shortly before 7:45 p.m. ET Microsoft 365 saw about 9,800 reported outages
Earlier, the company warned that the restored servers “can become unresponsive again once they receive traffic.”
“We’re analyzing diagnostic data to determine what’s triggering the behavior,” Microsoft said in an update just after 7 p.m. ET. “In parallel, we’re temporarily limiting which types of traffic can reach the affected infrastructure in some locations.”
Microsoft outage impacting other AI businesses
The outage is also affecting connectors used by OpenAI and Anthropic to power their artificial intelligence services.
OpenAI said it was investigating an issue with Microsoft connectors, noting that new connections may be broken and that tools were not working as expected. Anthropic said it had identified an issue with an upstream provider affecting its Microsoft 365 connector.
The latest disruption follows an outage last month involving Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform, which affected the technology giant’s suite of productivity software and disrupted services across a range of industries worldwide.
Outage reports continue to decline
As of 6:30 p.m. ET, reports of issues with Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft 365 have continued to decline. In its latest update, Microsoft said that it was seeing “limited recovery” in affected services.
“We’re also shifting traffic to alternate routes wherever possible and observing limited recovery. In parallel, we’ve streamlined the process of returning the remaining affected servers to service. As capacity is restored, users may experience a gradual recovery as their clients reconnect,” Microsoft said in an update.
Outlook outages sunk to 32,513 at 6:25 p.m. ET, with 365 seeing 11,294 outages at 6:23 p.m. ET; as of writing, both services continue to see outage reports continuously drop.
Issues persist despite declining outage reports
Microsoft was still struggling to get back online by the evening, though reported outage numbers continued to shrink.
“We’re opening all available pathways to restore service, as our actions taken thus far have not provided the anticipated relief,” it said in a 5:09 p.m. ET update on social media. “We found a core process on affected servers is becoming overwhelmed, causing capacity loss.” A similar message appeared on its service health page at 5:11 p.m. ET.
Outlook outages hit 38,456 at 5:32 p.m. ET, while 365 outages dropped to 13,000 at 5:17 p.m. ET but rebounded to 16,850 about 15 minutes later.
Microsoft says it’s closing in on a fix
Microsoft signaled it may be closer to a fix in a social media post at 4:40 p.m. ET, saying it was “actively restarting and validating the affected servers to return them to service.”
Outlook outage reports dropped to 49,000 just before 5 p.m. ET, while 365 reports dropped to 18,800. Copilot appeared to be back online for the vast majority of users.
Still, an update on the company’s service health page showed that multiple services, including Outlook, Teams, SharePoint, Copilot and Defender, were experiencing disruptions.
“We’re continuing to work through restarting and validating the affected servers to safely return them to service, and we’re exploring opportunities to expedite this process,” it said.
Outage reports drop
More 365 accounts appeared to gradually get back online just before 4 p.m. ET, with 19,000 outages reported — down from an earlier peak of 47,000.
Outlook users continued to report issues accessing their accounts, but outage reports dropped around 3 p.m. ET, hitting a relative plateau from 3:30 p.m. through 4 p.m., when just over 58,000 outages were detected.
“We’ve validated an alternative service health check method, which allowed a subset of affected servers to successfully return to service,” Microsoft said in a social media post. “We’re now applying this change more broadly. We’re also preparing automated recovery systems to continually detect and restart unresponsive servers.”
Microsoft’s health status page also said that “users may be unable to connect to multiple Microsoft 365 services” at 4 p.m. ET, including Outlook, Teams, SharePoint, Copilot, Defender, To Do and Purview.
Social media reacts
Amid the outage, social media users shared memes and reactions to the ongoing issues, which, for some, came during the middle of their workday.
Reports begin to tick down
According to Downdetector, after reaching a peak of 128,874 reports at 1:09 p.m. ET, Microsoft Outlook outage reports have begun to tick down, with the latest number dropping to 92,914 at around 1:50 p.m. ET.
Reports of outages for Microsoft 365 also dropped from its peak of over 46,000 to about 37,000 as of 1:50 p.m. ET. In its latest update, Microsoft said it was continuing to work to reduce the impact of the ongoing outage.
“We’re aggressively pursuing all pathways to reduce impact. We’ve paused all deployments, we’re moving additional traffic off the affected infrastructure, and we’re restarting affected servers to return them to service,” Microsoft said in a social media post.
Microsoft says it’s working to mitigate impact
Outages continued to plague Microsoft products just before 2 p.m. ET. Reports of disrupted service to Microsoft 365 reached a new peak of more than 47,000 around 1:20 p.m. ET. Outlook was just shy of 130,00 reported outages at the same time.
“While we’re working to mitigate impact, we’ve confirmed the issue may affect Microsoft 365 service connectivity for users in any region,” Microsoft said in a social media post shortly after 1 p.m. ET.
“We’ve begun redistributing connection traffic across our broader worldwide infrastructure to help balance the load,” the company later said in another update.
