The Microsoft 365 outage that started on Thursday, Nov. 12, was still not fully fixed on Friday morning. At 7:58 a.m. ET on Nov. 13, Microsoft’s own status page said it was seeing “continued recovery progress across affected regions,” with broader improvements in North America and across much of Europe, but that “some users may continue to experience intermittent access issues or delayed email delivery.” If Outlook, your work calendar or your company email has been acting up since Thursday, this is why.
The short version
Microsoft is still recovering from a Microsoft 365 outage that began Nov. 12 and hit Outlook, email delivery, calendars and several work tools. Most Teams calls and chats kept working.
- As of 7:58 a.m. ET on Nov. 13, Microsoft still listed the outage as a “service degradation” and said recovery was progressing in North America, Europe and Asia Pacific.
- Microsoft said earlier in the outage that delayed email is being held for up to 48 hours so it is not lost, so do not resend everything right away.
- Teams calls, meetings, group chats and channel messages mostly worked, but Teams calendar invites and scheduling did not.
- Microsoft says it has no evidence of malicious activity and will publish a full report on the cause after the fix.
- The downside: there is no end time yet, so check Microsoft’s status page before you rely on email for anything urgent today.
What the Microsoft 365 outage broke, in plain English
Microsoft’s business status page lists a long set of affected services. The common thread is Exchange Online, the system that runs work email. Microsoft says features “that interact with Exchange Online and email services are impacted,” while parts that do not depend on email keep working.
- Outlook and email: people may not be able to open their mailbox in Outlook on the web, the Outlook desktop app or phone mail apps, and email delivery may be delayed.
- Teams: joining calls and meetings, group chats and channel messages are mostly fine. Calendar features, meeting invites, meeting edits and new live or virtual events are failing.
- Copilot: Microsoft 365 Copilot may not load, and it may not be able to read your email, calendar or files.
- Files: files stored in SharePoint still open, but some people cannot share them with people outside their company, and the “recent files” list in Microsoft 365 apps may not load.
- Other tools: Planner, To Do, Universal Print, Intune, Power Apps and parts of the admin center are also on Microsoft’s list.
Home users were hit too. Microsoft’s consumer status update at 6:55 a.m. ET on Nov. 13 said the problem affects Outlook.com, OneDrive, OneNote, Microsoft To Do, Teams and Microsoft 365 for the web, and that recovery work “is progressing.” Microsoft said its next consumer update would come by 9:30 a.m. ET.
The outage also spilled into other companies’ tools that plug into Microsoft 365. Anthropic and OpenAI both posted incidents on their own status pages for errors with their Microsoft 365 connectors, and Anthropic said its problem was caused by the Microsoft 365 service incident.
Was it a cyberattack?
Microsoft says no, at least so far. Its status page says, “At this time, we have no evidence of malicious activity associated with this incident.” Microsoft has not named a final cause. It says it will share a full report “with root cause and defense-in-depth actions after mitigation is complete,” which is a fancy way of saying it will explain what went wrong and what it is changing once the fix is done.
What changes for you: if you sent an important email since Thursday afternoon and the other person never got it, it may still be sitting in Microsoft’s queue. Microsoft says it has stretched the time it keeps trying to deliver delayed mail to 48 hours “to preserve delayed messages.” That means a late email is more likely to arrive late than to vanish, so check before you send the same message three times.
What to do while Microsoft 365 recovers
- Check the official status page yourself. Go to status.cloud.microsoft by typing it in. It shows separate updates for work accounts and personal accounts like Outlook.com.
- Do not reinstall Outlook or sign out. For the Power Apps mobile app, Microsoft specifically warns that people who are already signed in can avoid trouble by not signing out, clearing app data or reinstalling. The same common sense applies to Outlook: reinstalling will not fix a problem on Microsoft’s side.
- Use Teams chat for urgent messages. Microsoft says Teams chats, channel messages and calls mostly work, so a quick message there can stand in for email today.
- Confirm meetings another way. Calendar invites are one of the broken features, so if a meeting matters, confirm the time in a chat or by phone.
- Ask before resending files. Before you resend a big attachment, ask the other person whether your first email arrived late.
- Watch for scam emails and texts. Be careful with any message that says your mailbox needs to be “verified” or “restored” because of the outage. Do not click the link. Check the status page yourself instead.
If you run a small business, this is also a good week to make sure at least two people know how to reach each other without work email, and to keep copies of key documents on your device. Our guide to securing every account you own in one afternoon covers the sign-in checks worth doing while you wait.
How long will the Microsoft 365 outage last?
Microsoft has not given an end time. Its update at 7:58 a.m. ET on Nov. 13 said its focus is on “stabilizing recovered infrastructure, completing mitigation in the remaining impacted areas, and reducing delayed email queues and backlogs.” In plain terms, many people are getting their email back, some are still waiting, and late messages are still working their way through. Microsoft said its next business update would come by 9 a.m. ET. We will update this story when Microsoft says the outage is fully fixed.
If you pay for Microsoft 365 at home, our explainer on the Microsoft 365 Family storage change covers the other big change to your plan this year.
