Microsoft Global Outage: When One Glitch Puts the World on Hold

Microsoft’s global outage, which began on Thursday, November 12, and entered a second day today, disrupted Outlook, Teams and Copilot for users in more than 70 countries, forcing companies, schools, police forces and government agencies to switch to phone calls and other workarounds. The US technology company reportedly said the disruption stemmed from several servers becoming unexpectedly unavailable, placing “elevated load” on the remaining infrastructure, and said it was not aware of malicious activity behind the incident.

The outage affected services connected to Microsoft’s Exchange Online email system, meaning many users could not access mailboxes through Outlook on the web or desktop, while email delivery was delayed. Microsoft said Teams functions such as calls, meetings and channel messages were largely unaffected, but calendar-related tasks could fail; further reporting problems with Copilot’s access to work data.

We're investigating reports of users experiencing issues accessing Exchange Online mailboxes through multiple connection methods in the Americas. More details can be found in the Microsoft 365 admin center under EX1550543.

— Microsoft 365 Status (@MSFT365Status)

November 12, 2026

Second Day of Disruption

Downdetector recorded more than 130,000 reports of Outlook problems at the peak on Thursday, with reports later emerging across 74 countries and territories. The monitoring site’s figures reflect only users who submitted reports, so the true number affected is likely to be substantially higher among Microsoft 365’s more than 430 million users.

Microsoft initially said it was seeing “positive results” in restoring services, but later said its changes were “not taking as expected”. AP reports that the company said it was pursuing “multiple workstreams” to identify the cause and restore its backend servers, and would publish a post-incident report once the issue was resolved.

“We will continue to treat this incident with urgency and priority until full resolution,” Microsoft said, as reported by the BBC.

Public Services Affected

The disruption reached beyond office workers. UK police forces, including the Metropolitan Police, asked the public to use telephone lines rather than online forms, while the UK government said it was working with Microsoft and had contingency plans to limit disruption to public services.

The National Pharmacy Association said access to the NHS email system had been affected, potentially delaying communication between pharmacies, GP practices and some patients. “Please bear with your pharmacy teams today, where waits may be longer than normal, and there may be delays to some prescriptions,” BBC reports, citing a spokesperson.

Read our statement on today's Microsoft IT outage Please bare with your pharmacy teams today, where waits may be longer than normal and there may be delays to some prescriptions https://t.co/Q5fxs14npO

— National Pharmacy Association (@NPA1921) November 13, 2026

In India, IndiGo said its email support services had been disrupted, although its other support channels and flight operations remained available. Singapore’s Government Technology Agency said government emails were down, while Japan’s deputy chief cabinet secretary, Masanao Ozaki, said the country’s IT infrastructure had been affected.

Service Advisory Due to a global Microsoft service disruption, our email support services are currently impacted, and we may not be able to receive your emails. All other support channels remain available. For any urgent assistance, please reach out to 6E Skai through our website or mobile app. We regret the inconvenience and appreciate your patience and understanding.

— IndiGo (@IndiGo6E) November 13, 2026

CrowdStrike Comparison

In Australia, Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke said Microsoft had likened the disruption to the CrowdStrike outage of 2024. He said he had spoken to Microsoft’s top executive in Australia and the government’s national cybersecurity coordinator about the global disruption. “They (Microsoft) don’t believe they are dealing with a cyberattack. They believe that they are dealing in some ways (with something) similar to what we saw with respect to CrowdStrike where there is an update that has gone awry,” Burke told reporters in Sydney, according to BBC.

CrowdStrike is a leading, Texas-based, cybersecurity company, that too faced a global IT outage in July 2024. It later reportedly blamed a bug in an update for the July 2024 global outage, which disrupted airlines, broadcasters, banks, hospitals and retailers. Microsoft has not confirmed a cause for the current incident and said it would provide full details in a post-incident report once the issue was mitigated.

Concentration Risk

The episode has renewed scrutiny of how deeply governments, businesses and public services depend on a small number of cloud and productivity providers. With email, calendars, messaging and AI tools increasingly hosted by the same company, a single technical failure can quickly become a cross-border operational problem rather than an isolated IT incident.

Cyber-security experts said organisations needed contingency plans and alternatives for essential communications. “Businesses should review that dependence and build in alternatives, with clear contingency plans to keep essential operations running during an outage,” said Nicky Choo of cyber-security firm Mimecast.

The outage also illustrates the knock-on effects of concentrated digital infrastructure: OpenAI and Anthropic both reported problems connecting to Microsoft 365 services. For organisations that had moved core workflows onto Microsoft’s platform, the incident turned a corporate technology failure into a test of business continuity.