By Friday, Nov. 13, a disruption that began the previous day had reached 74 countries and territories, with Downdetector recording nearly 130,000 U.S. Outlook reports at peak, according to the Washington Post. This kind of network disruption at scale has become an increasingly visible threat to critical infrastructure.
Microsoft 365 carries more than 450 million paid commercial subscriptions as of January 2026, though the company said the number of users directly affected by this incident remained unclear.
Which Services Broke, and What Stayed Up
Exchange Online, the email infrastructure underpinning Outlook, Teams calendars and Microsoft Copilot, was disrupted across web, desktop and mobile clients.
Users experienced inaccessible mailboxes, delayed messages and failed deliveries, according to Microsoft’s service-status updates and Reuters. Core Teams meetings and Microsoft 365 features that did not depend on Exchange Online kept running for many users, though the incident was broad.
No Cyberattack, No Confirmed Root Cause
Australia’s Home Affairs Minister attributed to Microsoft the view that the disruption was not malicious.
Australia’s Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke told reporters in Sydney that Microsoft “don’t believe they are dealing with a cyberattack,” according to AP. Burke also said Microsoft had compared the disruption’s scale to the 2024 CrowdStrike incident.
Microsoft confirmed the same position in its own updates but had not publicly identified a root cause. Some fixes produced only partial or unsustained recovery, according to Microsoft’s service documentation.
Courts, Agencies and Governments Knocked Offline
Government agencies across four continents reported disrupted email services and activated backup communication channels.
Singapore’s Government Technology Agency said national government email services were down and that it was coordinating with Microsoft on restoration, according to AP. Japan reported an impact on government IT infrastructure and moved to secure telephone systems as backup communication channels.
Australia’s spy agency and federal police were among the affected organizations, according to Reuters. The U.S. House of Representatives said its users were affected and that its engineers were working with Microsoft, according to Reuters. In the Philippines, the Supreme Court reported that email responses and some operations were disrupted, according to AP.
Britain saw immediate operational consequences. A Manchester criminal trial was halted after delays, and British police said they could not receive online crime reports, directing the public to emergency telephone lines, according to AP. Separately, the National Pharmacy Association warned that NHS prescription communications could be delayed because of effects on NHS email systems. Concerns about handling government data through Microsoft’s cloud services have drawn increasing regulatory scrutiny across Europe.
Commercial Operations Feel the Pressure
The outage bled from productivity software into airline customer service and corporate reporting.
Air India rerouted its email services to keep customer inquiries flowing while flight operations continued unaffected, according to AP. IndiGo reported disruptions to email-based customer support while other channels and flights remained available.
A Hong Kong aluminum company told AP it could not receive updates from U.S. customers through Outlook, raising production-delay risk if the outage continued. Workhorse Group postponed its quarterly earnings conference call because of the disruption.
Recovery Progress, With Caveats
Microsoft reported improving conditions but offered no confirmed timeline for full restoration.
“We’re seeing encouraging recovery progress, with service availability and email delivery performance improving across a growing portion of affected Microsoft 365 infrastructure.” Microsoft, in a service-status update reported by AP.
North America and much of Europe showed improvement, while Asia-Pacific was showing early recovery signs, according to the Washington Post. Microsoft extended the Outlook email timeout window to 48 hours to preserve delayed mail, but no confirmed deadline for full restoration was available. Users dealing with lingering computer problems in the wake of the outage may find practical troubleshooting guidance helpful.
The Second Disruption of 2026
Exchange Online sits beneath calendars, Copilot and third-party AI integrations, meaning its disruption rippled well beyond email.
The outage affected services and integrations that depended on Microsoft 365 data, email, authentication or collaboration systems. Tools from OpenAI and Anthropic both reported connection failures during the incident, according to AP.
This was Microsoft’s second reported 365-related disruption of the year, according to Reuters.
