Microsoft 365 outage was not a hack, Microsoft says, as services recover

No sign of a cyberattack

Microsoft has confirmed that there is no indication of malicious or cyber activity behind the Microsoft 365 outage that began on 12 November 2026. According to Windows Latest, the company says its own servers were to blame.

Charles Lamanna, Microsoft's executive vice president of Copilot, Agents, and Platform, apologised for the disruption. In a statement, he said the company regretted that the outages disrupted customers and that work was under way to address the problem.

Microsoft also said it would keep sharing information as soon as it had more to give. The company has not officially declared the incident resolved.

How the outage unfolded

The problems started at around 8:30 AM Pacific Time on 12 November. Users worldwide found Outlook email, Teams messaging and Copilot unavailable or unreliable.

At 11:30 AM Pacific Time, Microsoft confirmed that overloaded servers were mostly responsible. Some servers suddenly became unavailable, so traffic was redirected to other machines, which put extra strain on the remaining infrastructure.

A configuration change rolled out later helped stabilise most products, including Outlook and Teams, by 3 PM Pacific Time. Even so, Microsoft reportedly said recovery had not reached the level it expected, and some users were still affected.

Services slowly coming back

Windows Latest reports that most services, including Teams and Copilot, were back online roughly 18 hours after Microsoft first acknowledged the issues. Outlook, however, was still causing trouble for some users.

The publication's editor describes being unable to open a shared mailbox in the new Outlook for Windows despite having admin rights, while the same mailbox worked in Outlook for Android. A second account showed an error saying the request could not be completed.

Because of these lingering problems, Microsoft had not marked the incident as resolved at the time of reporting, nearly 19 hours after it began.

What affected customers can do

Windows Latest suggests that customers affected by the several-hour outage may be entitled to compensation under their service level agreement, the contractual promise about how reliable a service should be. The publication recommends contacting Microsoft support to claim credit.

Microsoft says it will be careful going forward, but the company has not published a full post-incident explanation yet. Customers should watch the official Microsoft 365 health centre and the company's statements for confirmed details.

Why this outage matters

Windows Latest describes the incident as Microsoft's worst outage in its own history, with millions of users unable to reach email, chat or AI features during working hours.

The episode shows how dependent many organisations are on Microsoft 365 for basic tasks. When a configuration problem at the provider takes down Outlook, Teams and Copilot at once, businesses have little they can do except wait and seek redress afterwards.