# Outlook outage: Microsoft 365 down, what we know > Outlook, Teams and Microsoft 365 went down around 1 p.m. ET on Nov. 12. What Microsoft says caused it, what is back and what to do now. By Subhajit | 2026-11-13 | Tech | Savvy VibeZ Web page: https://savvyvibez.com/post/outlook-outage-microsoft-365-down-what-we-know ## Key takeaways - A Microsoft 365 outage cut off Outlook email for many users starting just before 1 p.m. ET on Thursday, Nov. 12. - Microsoft says servers failed automated health checks; it reports no indication of a cyberattack. - Downdetector showed nearly 130,000 Outlook reports at the peak, falling to about 13,000 five hours later. - Microsoft had restored some servers but gave no ETA for full recovery as of the latest reports we read. A Microsoft 365 outage knocked Outlook email offline for many U.S. users starting just before 1 p.m. ET on Thursday, Nov. 12, and it had not been fully fixed as of the latest reports we read that evening. The Verge, CNBC, the Associated Press and The Guardian all report that Microsoft is still returning affected servers to service. Microsoft has given no time for full recovery. ## Is Outlook down, and which Microsoft services are affected? Yes, for a lot of people, though reports have fallen sharply from the peak. According to the Associated Press, nearly 130,000 users reported Outlook problems on Downdetector just after 1 p.m. ET. The Guardian says reports dropped to about 13,000 roughly five hours later. Downdetector counts are user-submitted, so they show the shape of the problem rather than an exact number of affected customers. Microsoft's own wording centers on Exchange Online, the mail service behind Outlook. Engadget reports that its status page also listed Teams, SharePoint Online, Microsoft 365 Copilot and Defender XDR, and that Planner, To Do, Intune, Purview and Power BI were added later. Digital Trends says Microsoft is tracking the incidents as EX1550543 and MO1550821. Business and enterprise customers were hit hardest, but Engadget notes individual users appeared to be affected too. ## What caused the Microsoft 365 outage? Microsoft first blamed "elevated load" on a portion of its infrastructure. It later said the load was a side effect: a number of servers had become "unexpectedly unavailable" after failing automated health checks, which put strain on the servers that were left. Deadline quotes Microsoft saying a core process on the affected servers was becoming overwhelmed and causing them to stop responding. A Microsoft spokesperson told The Guardian the company had "no indication of a cyber-attack." Microsoft has not named a root cause beyond the health-check problem, and Digital Trends reports it had not identified a recent change that clearly lined up with the start of the outage. Microsoft also said it was weighing whether reverting a small number of recent configuration updates could speed recovery. ## Is Microsoft fixing it? Slowly. At 4 p.m. ET Microsoft said it had validated an alternative health-check method that brought some servers back, according to CNBC. By about 6 p.m. ET, The Verge reports, Microsoft said it had begun returning a portion of the servers to service, was routing traffic through other paths and had seen "limited recovery in some regions." It also paused all deployments, according to RNZ. It has not been a clean climb. iTnews reports Microsoft saying that servers it had restored could become unresponsive again once traffic returned to them. Teams in North America was reported restored earlier in the day, per The Guardian, though some users still saw problems. ## What should you do right now? - **Expect a gradual return.** Microsoft says clients will reconnect as capacity comes back, so your inbox may work before a coworker's does. - **Check the official status page** at status.cloud.microsoft, and if you are an admin, the Microsoft 365 admin center service health view for the incident IDs above. - **Do not assume a missed message is lost.** That is our reading, not a Microsoft statement, but mail sent to you while your service is down is normally held and retried by the sender's system. - **Have a second channel** for urgent messages. The Guardian quotes an RMIT University engineering professor, Mark Gregory, saying businesses should keep a backup option for exactly this case. ## Our take Hours without email is the kind of thing people shrug off until it lands on a deadline. What stands out here is the second recovery attempt failing after the first one worked for a subset of servers. That pattern suggests Microsoft was still chasing the trigger, not just restarting machines. The Guardian also notes the outage hit Microsoft 365 connectors used by OpenAI and Anthropic, and that Microsoft reported an Azure outage last month. One caveat: AWS told CNBC it was operating normally, so reports of wider internet trouble on Thursday were not a sign of a bigger outage. We will update this story when Microsoft declares the incident resolved. ## Related reading - [Windows 11 KB5132061 won't install: what to do now](/post/windows-11-kb5132061-won-t-install-what-to-do-now) - [Microsoft Azure hits $33.2B as quarterly revenue tops $92B](/post/microsoft-azure-hits-33-2b-as-quarterly-revenue-tops-92b) Picture credit: Photo: Wikimedia Commons (public domain)