Thousands of users worldwide have reported difficulties accessing Microsoft products, including Outlook, Microsoft Teams, OneDrive and Microsoft 365, following a widespread service disruption on Thursday, November 12, 2026.
The outage was highlighted by Downdetector, a website that monitors service disruptions through user reports. The problems affected several Microsoft platforms, leaving users unable to access emails, communicate through workplace applications and use other online services.
According to the Associated Press, nearly 130,000 users reported problems accessing Outlook shortly after 1 p.m. Eastern Time. Reports also increased for Microsoft Teams, Microsoft 365, Copilot and other Microsoft services.
Microsoft acknowledged the disruption, saying it was investigating reports of users experiencing difficulties accessing Exchange Online mailboxes through different connection methods across the Americas.
The company initially reported problems affecting Microsoft Teams in North America. Although it later announced that the Teams disruption had been resolved, users continued reporting difficulties with other services.
Microsoft subsequently identified elevated workloads affecting portions of its infrastructure across multiple regions as a possible cause of the connectivity problems.
In response, the technology company said it had begun redistributing network traffic, moving additional connections away from affected infrastructure and restarting impacted servers to restore normal operations.
Microsoft also paused certain deployments while its technical teams worked to reduce the disruption and stabilise its services.
The disruption affected several products used by individuals, businesses, schools and organisations for communication, file storage and daily operations.
Outlook users reported difficulties opening their inboxes, sending messages and receiving emails. Microsoft Teams users also experienced connectivity problems, although reports suggested that some of those issues had improved following Microsoft’s initial intervention.
Other affected platforms included OneDrive, Copilot and Microsoft 365 applications. The disruption also raised concerns about services that depend on Microsoft’s cloud infrastructure.
The outage was particularly significant because Microsoft products support communication and business operations across different industries. Organisations relying on Outlook for correspondence and Teams for virtual meetings faced potential interruptions to their daily activities.
Meanwhile, reports indicated that other major technology platforms were experiencing disruptions around the same period, although the relationship between those incidents and Microsoft’s outage had not been established.
Microsoft had not provided a definitive explanation for what initially triggered the infrastructure problems or announced a confirmed timeline for the complete restoration of all affected services.
Users experiencing difficulties were advised to monitor Microsoft’s service updates and Downdetector for further information as technical teams continued working to resolve the disruption.
The incident highlights the dependence of businesses and individuals on cloud-based technology and the potential consequences when widely used digital services experience unexpected interruptions.
Swifteradio.com
