THE WORLD WENT QUIET: Microsoft Outage Disrupts Outlook, Teams and Copilot Across 74 Countries

NEW YORK / LONDON, 13 November 2026

A major disruption to Microsoft's digital infrastructure has affected users and organisations across 74 countries and territories, interrupting access to Outlook, Microsoft Teams, Copilot and other Microsoft 365 services. The outage, which began on Thursday, 12 November, continued into Friday as the technology company struggled to restore normal operations.

The incident has affected businesses, government institutions, airlines, financial organisations and public services that depend on Microsoft's cloud-based communication systems. Microsoft said on Friday that its recovery operations were showing early signs of stabilisation, although some users continued to experience problems.

According to the Associated Press, Microsoft first acknowledged the disruption on Thursday after users began reporting difficulties accessing their email accounts and other workplace applications. The problem extended beyond Outlook, affecting Teams, Microsoft's artificial intelligence assistant Copilot and services dependent on its Exchange Online infrastructure.

The scale of the incident is significant. Microsoft says more than 430 million people use its Microsoft 365 applications. However, this figure represents the platform's overall user base, not the number of people confirmed to have been affected by this particular outage.

The monitoring platform Downdetector recorded nearly 140,000 reports of Outlook problems from 74 countries and territories at the height of the disruption. Such reports indicate the geographical spread and intensity of complaints but do not constitute an official count of affected users.

The consequences have extended into essential services. In the United Kingdom, police forces reported difficulties receiving online crime reports and advised members of the public to use telephone channels for urgent communication. The National Pharmacy Association also warned of possible prescription delays because some NHS email systems were affected.

The disruption also reached the financial sector. Reuters reported that some Taiwanese financial institutions encountered difficulties managing communications and transactions. One company reportedly cancelled a bond repurchase transaction, while another resorted to fax communication to confirm trades.

An important question concerns the cause. Microsoft has said it has no indication that the incident resulted from malicious or cyber activity. Australia's Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke said Microsoft had compared the situation to the 2024 CrowdStrike incident, which involved a faulty software update. However, that comparison does not establish the cause of the present outage.

Microsoft has described infrastructure problems and difficulties restoring affected servers. Some earlier recovery changes did not work as expected, forcing engineers to pursue alternative measures.

The incident has renewed debate about the dependence of governments and businesses on a small number of major technology providers. When a widely used cloud platform experiences a serious disruption, the consequences can spread across industries that may appear unrelated.

For now, Microsoft says recovery is progressing. The company has not established a definitive public explanation of the root cause, and full restoration should not be assumed simply because some services have resumed.

The bigger question: How prepared are organisations to continue operating when the digital platforms on which they depend suddenly become unavailable?