Microsoft has reported progress in restoring its services following a global outage that disrupted access to Outlook, Teams and other business applications, affecting millions of users across dozens of countries.
The technology giant said email delivery performance was improving across an expanding portion of its affected Microsoft 365 infrastructure, although some customers could continue experiencing intermittent service disruptions.
In an update posted on X on Thursday, November 13, 2026, Microsoft described the recovery as “encouraging”, suggesting that its efforts to restore normal operations were gaining traction.
However, the company cautioned that the restoration was not yet complete, as some users continued reporting difficulties accessing their emails and other Microsoft services.
The outage, which began around midday Eastern Time on Thursday, disrupted several essential workplace tools, including Outlook email, Microsoft Teams and other applications used by businesses and organisations worldwide.
The incident affected more than routine office communications, with banks, government agencies, healthcare providers, railway operators and courts also reporting disruptions linked to Microsoft products.
AI companies also reported experiencing service difficulties, highlighting the extent to which businesses and digital services depend on Microsoft’s cloud infrastructure and productivity ecosystem.
The scale of the disruption was reflected in reports recorded by Downdetector, which showed that outage complaints had spread across 74 countries and territories within approximately one hour.
The disruption also affected technology companies relying on Microsoft’s infrastructure. OpenAI and Anthropic reported problems with services connected to Microsoft 365, demonstrating how an outage at a major cloud and productivity provider can affect other technology platforms.
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