Microsoft outage leaves Outlook, Teams and Copilot down for millions

What happened

Microsoft is dealing with a global outage that has knocked out most of its major services, including Exchange, Outlook, Teams and Copilot. According to Apple Insider, the disruption has now lasted more than 17 hours.

The New York Times reports that the first problems were noticed at around 1:00 p.m. Eastern on Thursday, 12 November 2026. By 10:00 p.m. that evening, Microsoft said repairs were not taking as expected.

Which services are affected

The outage covers Microsoft Exchange, the email and calendar platform used by many businesses, along with several Microsoft 365 services. That means mail, messaging and collaboration tools are unavailable or unreliable for a large number of users worldwide.

The timing is awkward for Apple users. In October 2026, a change in Microsoft's Exchange Web Services already caused problems for Apple Mail, and now all of Exchange has gone down.

Microsoft's recovery efforts

Microsoft is posting updates roughly every hour on its status page. One earlier update, since removed, reportedly described early signs of stabilisation.

The most recent update at around 6:00 a.m. Eastern struck a more positive tone. Microsoft said recovery actions had been completed across parts of the affected infrastructure in the Asia Pacific region, and that traffic was being gradually restored. Improvements were reported in mailbox access and delayed email processing.

The company cautioned that some users may still face intermittent issues. It said its focus is now on extending recovery actions to other regions while adding capacity to improve service consistency.

Cause and security concerns

Outages of this scale often raise questions about cyber attacks. Microsoft has addressed this directly, stating in its updates that it has no evidence of malicious activity connected to the incident.

The company has repeated that it will treat the problem with urgency until full mitigation. It has not given a specific cause in the updates cited by Apple Insider.

What users can expect

Downdetector has shown steadily falling numbers of problem reports, but Apple Insider notes this may simply reflect that people have stopped filing individual reports as the story spread.

Microsoft is still reporting major problems across its services. Users should check the company's official status page for the latest information rather than relying on third-party report counts, and expect gradual restoration rather than an instant fix.