Yes, Outlook is down today because Microsoft 365 suffered a major global outage that began on Thursday, 12 November 2026. The fault is at Microsoft's end, not with your computer, your internet connection or your password, and Microsoft was still gradually restoring services on Friday, 13 November 2026, with no full recovery confirmed at the time of writing.

Millions of people found they could not open their inboxes, send or receive email, or join Teams calls, as the disruption hit Microsoft's Exchange Online service, which powers Outlook email and calendars. Reports of Outlook problems peaked at 138,058 on the tracking site Downdetector at around 1 p.m. Eastern Time on Thursday, before falling to around 34,490 by the evening as some users reconnected. By 5.47 p.m. Eastern Time, reports of problems with Microsoft 365 as a whole had fallen to nearly 13,000, with 763 reports about Teams.

What happened during the Microsoft outage?

The problems began on Thursday afternoon in the United States, which was early on Friday morning in Australia, and spread worldwide. Microsoft first reported that users in the Americas were having trouble reaching their Exchange Online mailboxes at about 3.54 a.m. Brisbane time on Friday, and later confirmed the problem could affect users in any region. It then opened a wider advisory covering the whole Microsoft 365 suite.

Reports peaked at about 4.20 a.m. Brisbane time, with more than 120,000 Outlook users logging problems on Downdetector in the United States alone. Microsoft found a workaround at about 7 a.m. Brisbane time that brought some servers back, but at about 8.10 a.m. it said its fixes so far had not delivered the relief it expected. By about 9 a.m. Brisbane time, a portion of the affected servers had returned to service and stayed stable, and Microsoft told customers to expect a gradual recovery as their apps reconnected. At about 10 a.m., it warned that restored servers could become unresponsive again once they started taking traffic, and said it was working on a fix.

As of 6 p.m. Eastern Time on Thursday, Microsoft said it was still working to return affected servers to service and had observed limited recovery as users gradually reconnected. Microsoft said the restored servers had remained stable so far and that it was shifting traffic to alternate routes wherever possible while streamlining the process to bring the remaining affected servers back online. It added that as capacity was restored, users might experience a gradual recovery as their clients reconnected.

Which Microsoft services were affected?

Email was hit hardest, but the outage reached well beyond Outlook. Microsoft's service health advisory listed Exchange Online, which provides Outlook email and calendars, Microsoft Teams, SharePoint Online, Microsoft 365 Copilot, Microsoft Defender XDR, Planner and To Do, Intune, Purview and Power BI. Not every user was affected, so some people found colleagues working normally while they were locked out of their own mailbox.

The disruption also spread to other companies that rely on Microsoft's services. OpenAI said it was investigating an issue with Microsoft connectors in which new connections might be broken and tools were not working as expected. Anthropic said it had identified an issue with an upstream provider affecting its Microsoft 365 connector. In Australia, the outage caught up the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation and the Australian Federal Police, whose leaders confirmed at a news conference that their organisations had been affected. The Australian government activated an agreement with Microsoft to ensure priority restoration of services.

Businesses felt the impact directly. Electric truck maker Workhorse Group, which had been expected to report third-quarter results on 12 November, rescheduled the announcement to 16 November, citing business disruptions caused by the global Microsoft outage.

What caused the Microsoft 365 outage?

Microsoft says a large number of its servers became unexpectedly unavailable after failing automated health checks. Their workload then shifted onto the remaining servers, which struggled to keep up with the extra load. Microsoft has ruled out a surge in traffic as the cause and has not yet published a root cause for the failure.

Microsoft has also said there is no indication of a cyber attack. A Microsoft spokesperson told the ABC there was no sign of an attack, and Australia's Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke said Microsoft had told him it did not believe the outage was caused by a cyber attack. That matters because a widespread failure of email and workplace tools can look like an attack, but everything Microsoft has published so far points to an internal infrastructure problem rather than a security incident.

Microsoft is tracking the incident under two reference numbers that IT administrators can follow in the Microsoft 365 admin centre: EX1550543 for Exchange Online and MO1550821 for the wider Microsoft 365 services. If the admin centre will not load, Microsoft's status page at status.cloud.microsoft carries the same updates.

This is not the first time Microsoft's cloud services have failed at scale this year. Last month, Microsoft reported an outage of its Azure cloud platform that affected its suite of productivity software and a range of industries worldwide. The company has not said when it will publish a full account of what went wrong this time.

What should I do if Outlook is still not working?

First, leave your settings alone. Do not reset your password, remove your account or reinstall Outlook. None of that fixes an outage at Microsoft's end, and it can leave you with a second problem, such as a sign-in failure, once service returns.

If Outlook on your computer will not connect, try another way in. During a gradual recovery, one route can work before the others, so try Outlook on the web at outlook.office.com or the Outlook app on your phone. For anything urgent, pick up the phone rather than assuming an email you sent has arrived, and check your Outbox, because messages written during the outage may still be sitting there. They should send once Outlook reconnects.

Be careful about scam emails. Scammers use events like this to send fake messages telling people to reactivate their mailbox or verify their Microsoft account. Microsoft will not ask you to sign in again through a link in an email to fix this outage, so treat any message that does as suspicious.

Once you are back online, restart Outlook and Teams if they still show as disconnected, check that the morning's emails have arrived, and ask key clients or suppliers to resend anything you were expecting. Also check your calendar for meeting invitations or changes that arrived late. If one person is still stuck after colleagues have recovered, that is the point to log a support ticket.

Is Outlook back to normal yet?

Not fully. As of midday Australian Eastern Standard Time on Friday, 13 November 2026, Microsoft was gradually restoring service and had not confirmed full recovery or a root cause. Some users were back online while others still had connection problems, and Microsoft warned that restored servers could become unresponsive again as they took on traffic. The best place to check the latest position is Microsoft's status page or the Service health page in the Microsoft 365 admin centre.

Frequently asked questions

Is Microsoft 365 still down? As of Friday, 13 November 2026, Microsoft was gradually restoring service and had not confirmed full recovery. Some users were back online while others still had connection problems.

Was the Microsoft outage a cyber attack? Microsoft says there is no indication of a cyber attack. It says a large number of its own servers became unexpectedly unavailable, which overloaded the rest, and it has not yet published a root cause.

Did anyone lose emails during the outage? Microsoft has described this as a connection problem, and nothing it has published points to lost mail. Emails written during the outage should send from the Outbox once Outlook reconnects, and sending mail servers normally keep retrying delivery when a mailbox cannot be reached.

Should I reset my password or reinstall Outlook? No. The fault is at Microsoft's end, so changing your password or reinstalling Outlook will not help and can create new sign-in problems. Wait for service to return, then restart Outlook and Teams.