Washington DC/IBNS-CMEDIA: Microsoft has resolved a major global outage that disrupted Outlook, Teams and Copilot for more than 24 hours, affecting businesses and users across several countries, media reports said.
“We have completed our efforts to address the underlying issue of the incident and restored service,” the company said, as quoted by The Times of India.
Earlier, Microsoft had clarified that the disruption was caused by a technical issue and not by a cyberattack or AI agents.
“The incident was introduced by an issue during an earlier network capacity upgrade that surfaced following a recent network change,” the company had said.
We are deeply sorry for the disruption this incident has caused our customers and partners. We know the trust they place in our services and take that responsibility extremely seriously. We are seeing broad recovery and stability across our services. This was a technical issue not related to cyber or AI / agents. The incident was introduced by an issue during an earlier network capacity upgrade that surfaced following a recent network change. We have addressed the underlying issue and continue to restore service to remaining customers and regions. Given the scale of demand, we restored services gradually, validating stability at each stage. While this took longer, it helped ensure a stable restoration. We will provide a full post-incident report once our review is complete.
— Microsoft (@Microsoft) November 13, 2026
What happened?
The disruption affected Microsoft’s cloud-based productivity ecosystem, particularly Microsoft 365.
Users across several countries reported difficulties accessing Outlook, Microsoft’s email platform. Problems also affected Microsoft Teams, the company’s workplace communication platform, and Copilot, its AI assistant.
The outage spread across North America, Europe and the Asia-Pacific region, disrupting businesses, government agencies and individual users.
According to outage-tracking platform Downdetector, reports of disruptions came from 74 countries and territories. At one stage, Outlook-related complaints surged to more than 2,000 times their normal levels.
Which Microsoft services were affected?
Several Microsoft services experienced disruptions during the outage.
Outlook: Users faced difficulties accessing emails, sending messages and receiving communications.
Microsoft Teams: Users reported problems with workplace communication, online meetings and collaboration.
Microsoft 365: Several cloud-based workplace applications experienced disruptions.
Microsoft Copilot: Users encountered difficulties accessing Microsoft’s AI assistant.
Exchange Online: The cloud-based email and calendar infrastructure also experienced significant disruption.
The outage also affected certain third-party services that depend on Microsoft’s infrastructure and Microsoft 365 integrations.
What caused the outage?
Microsoft attributed the disruption to a technical issue involving an earlier network capacity upgrade.
According to the company, the problem surfaced following a subsequent network change, triggering disruptions across parts of its infrastructure.
Microsoft ruled out a cyberattack and clarified that the incident was not caused by artificial intelligence-related technology.
The company subsequently worked to address the underlying technical issue and restore services for affected users.
