Multiple Microsoft 365 services experience outage on Nov. 12

Microsoft is experiencing an outage affecting several Microsoft 365 services this afternoon, including Outlook and Teams. The company's support account on X acknowledged the issue, while a status message listed multiple potentially impacted services. Microsoft said affected infrastructure is experiencing elevated load across multiple regions.

Impacted services

At 2:15 p.m. ET, many Engadget staff were unable to load Microsoft's service status page. Those who could see it found a message listing Exchange Online, Microsoft Teams, SharePoint Online, Microsoft Copilot 365 and Microsoft Defender XDR as potentially impacted services. The status report points to Business and Enterprise tiers of the 365 tools, but individual users also appear to be impacted. Around 5 p.m. ET, Microsoft Planner, Microsoft To Do, Microsoft Intune, Microsoft Defender for Office 365 and Microsoft Purview were added to the list. Issues with Power BI and the Microsoft 365 Apps Admin Center were also noted.

Microsoft's response

Microsoft's full update said it is investigating an issue impacting multiple Microsoft 365 services and found affected infrastructure experiencing elevated load across multiple regions, likely contributing to connectivity errors. It said it is restarting and repairing impacted portions of infrastructure to restore capacity, reviewing an unexpected increase in a specific type of service traffic, and evaluating options to redirect traffic to alternate infrastructure. Later, the status page said a fix for the disruptions still may not be imminent because actions taken so far have not provided the anticipated relief. It also said a core process on affected servers is becoming overwhelmed, causing servers to stop responding and contributing to capacity loss.

Status

Engadget last updated its report at 5:55 p.m. EST on Nov. 12, 2026, and marked it as developing. Microsoft did not state a restoration time in the quoted updates.

Sources: Engadget · The Register