Widespread Microsoft 365 outage impacts users globally

A significant technical disruption hit Microsoft 365 services on Thursday, November 12, 2026, primarily affecting thousands of users in the United States before spreading to the Asia-Pacific region during Friday business hours. According to outage-tracker Downdetector, reports peaked at over 97,000 for Outlook, 38,000 for Microsoft 365, and 4,500 for Teams at 2:07 p.m. ET. The failure also impacted AI services provided by OpenAI and Anthropic, along with various government agencies in the US, Australia, and Japan.

Microsoft responded by pausing all service deployments, diverting traffic, and restarting servers. Despite initial claims of a resolution for North American users, the issue persisted and expanded globally. By Friday, the company admitted that initial adjustments did not result in sustained recovery, noting only partial improvements. This incident marks the second major disruption to Microsoft 365 services this year, prompting concerns among corporate clients regarding the platform's long-term reliability.

Moving forward, Microsoft has stated it is reviewing additional actions to improve overall infrastructure stability. The company continues to monitor the situation as teams work to restore full functionality across all affected regions.