Exchange Online Outage Still Ongoing: Latest Updates (Nov 12, 2026)
Update, 6:55 PM ET, Nov 13: Microsoft has apologized and shared a cause. It says the incident was introduced by an issue during an earlier network capacity upgrade, that it has addressed the underlying issue, and that this was a technical issue not related to a cyberattack or AI. Microsoft reports broad recovery and stability and says it is still restoring service to remaining customers and regions. It has not yet declared the outage fully resolved.
Sources: Microsoft 365 Status, ABC News (Australia).
Update, 6:50 PM ET, Nov 13: Microsoft has not yet declared the outage resolved. Its most recent public update, at 10:39 AM ET, reported continued recovery, with service availability and email delivery improving across a growing portion of affected infrastructure. Email queues were already approaching normal levels earlier in the day. If you are still seeing problems, let us know.
Source: Microsoft 365 Status.
Update, 11:15 AM ET, Nov 13: Recovery continues. Microsoft reports broader improvements in North America and much of Europe, with recovery underway in Asia Pacific. As of its 9:17 AM ET update, email queues are significantly reduced and approaching normal levels. Some users may still see intermittent access issues or delayed email. Microsoft has not yet declared the outage resolved.
Sources: Microsoft 365 Status (8:32 AM), Microsoft 365 Status (9:17 AM).
Update, 7:55 AM ET, Nov 13: Microsoft reports encouraging recovery progress, with service availability and email delivery improving across a growing share of affected infrastructure. Some users may still see intermittent issues while recovery continues. The outage is not yet resolved.
Source: Microsoft 365 Status.
Update, 7:20 AM ET, Nov 13: Microsoft reports more progress. Recovery work is complete on parts of the affected infrastructure and traffic is being gradually restored, with improvements in mailbox access and in processing delayed email. Some users are still affected, and Microsoft says it is seeing heavier volume as it rebalances traffic. The outage is not yet resolved.
Sources: Microsoft 365 Status, CIO.
Update, 6:30 AM ET, Nov 13: The outage is still ongoing as it enters its second day. Overnight, Microsoft patched part of its sign-in and routing system and reports positive results for server stability. It is rolling the patch out in stages, starting with regions entering business hours. Microsoft says capacity has not yet returned to normal and service remains uneven as traffic is reintroduced. Email is held, not lost: Microsoft extended the email timeout to 48 hours to preserve delayed messages. No root cause has been named yet; Microsoft says a post-incident report will follow.
Sources: TechRadar, WindowsForum, Microsoft 365 Status.
Update, 9:05 PM ET, Nov 12: The outage is still ongoing. Microsoft has confirmed the problem under incident EX1550543 and says a large number of Exchange Online servers became unexpectedly unavailable, which overloaded the remaining infrastructure. It says the extra load was not caused by a rise in traffic. Microsoft paused deployments, restarted affected servers, and began returning some of them to service, but as of its 7:50 PM ET update it was still limiting traffic in some locations because servers can become unresponsive again once they receive traffic. Microsoft has also listed Teams, SharePoint Online, Copilot, Intune, Defender and Planner as services that may be affected. Outage reports have fallen from a peak above 130,000 on Downdetector, but some users are still having trouble. Microsoft has not named a root cause.
Sources: ABC7, Tom’s Guide, TechRadar, WGCU.
Be wary of efforts to exploit the disruption. Scammers use outages as cover: fake “sign in to restore your mailbox” messages, texts or calls claiming to be Microsoft support, and links promising a fix. Microsoft will not contact you to fix this. If something asks for your password or a payment, stop and check with us first.
If you have spent the afternoon wondering why email isn’t moving or staring at a Microsoft error page, it is probably not your network. Around midday Eastern on Thursday, November 12, Microsoft 365 started misbehaving for a lot of people.
What we saw firsthand
At about 1:18 PM Eastern, the Microsoft 365 admin center (admin.cloud.microsoft) stopped loading for us. Instead of the admin homepage, we got a generic “We are sorry, something went wrong” page that tells you to wait a few minutes and check status.cloud.microsoft. That page is Microsoft’s own error screen, not a problem with our browser, VPN, or internet connection.
What other people are reporting
- Downdetector: Local news coverage from PIX11 says reports of Outlook and Microsoft 365 problems began around noon Eastern and passed 12,000 within about half an hour. Separately, Downdetector’s own post on X says it has seen user reports of Microsoft 365 trouble starting at 12:35 PM Eastern.
- A Teams incident earlier in the day: Cybersecurity News reported that Microsoft was investigating a Teams problem affecting North America, tracked as incident TM1550488 in the Microsoft 365 admin center. That report was published around 11:44 AM Eastern. Microsoft said automated recovery actions were reducing the impact, but did not say the service was fully back, and it did not describe the scope as global.
- Smaller trackers: Entireweb was flagging Microsoft 365 as down, citing 118 reports over 24 hours with 30 in the most recent hour. StatusGator, checking at 6:04 PM UTC, showed the suite as operational with only a handful of user-submitted reports, including one from Arizona saying Outlook and other Microsoft cloud products were not loading.
- Microsoft’s public status feed: Aggregators that watch Microsoft’s public status feed showed no active incident at roughly 18:10 UTC, but the public board often lags what customers see, and tenant-specific problems are posted inside the admin center instead.
What Microsoft is saying
Microsoft has now posted an official Exchange Online advisory in the admin center’s service health page. The advisory warns that users may be unable to connect to their mailboxes through multiple connection methods, and lists Outlook on the web, MAPI (the protocol the Outlook desktop app uses), Exchange ActiveSync (mobile mail), and the REST API as potentially affected. It says the impact may reach users in North America, Latin America, Canada, Chile, and Mexico.
Microsoft’s earliest notice, posted at 10:20 AM as displayed in the admin center, was a general warning about errors when accessing mailboxes. The more detailed update followed at 10:55 AM. As of that update, Microsoft said it was reviewing service health telemetry to isolate the errors, with the next update promised by 6:00 PM UTC (1:00 PM Eastern).
The incident was posted inside the admin center, not on the public status page, which is why that page looked quiet.
What we don’t know yet
Multiple independent sources show a spike of problems starting around late morning to midday Eastern, centered on Outlook, Microsoft 365, and Teams, with the heaviest reporting in the United States. That lines up with what we saw when the admin center failed.
Microsoft has not named a root cause. We also cannot say whether the earlier Teams incident and the Exchange Online problem are the same event or two separate ones. The trackers also disagree with each other, which is normal during a partial or regional incident, since each one samples different data. Treat any specific explanation you see on social media as speculation until Microsoft posts one.
This isn’t Microsoft’s first outage this fall. In October, Microsoft traced an Exchange admin center outage to a configuration change and fixed it by rolling the change back.
What to do right now
- Check Service health before troubleshooting anything locally. If you can reach the Microsoft 365 admin center, go to Health, then Service health, and look for your tenant’s incidents (like TM1550488). If the admin center itself is down, try status.cloud.microsoft.
- Test from a different path. Try Outlook on the web in an InPrivate or incognito window, or from your phone on cellular. If the web works and the desktop app does not, the problem is more likely the client than Microsoft’s servers.
- Hold off on big changes. Do not reset passwords, remove accounts, or reconfigure mail flow while the service is unstable. Those changes can create a second problem that outlasts the outage.
- Have a backup channel ready. If Teams or Outlook is down for your team, use phone calls and text messages for anything time sensitive, and let clients know to expect delayed email responses.
- Don’t assume mail is lost. Messages sent to your address during an outage are generally queued and delivered after service returns. Senders may see delay notices, which are not the same as bounces.
If you’re an Open Tier client
We’re on it. We’re watching this outage closely, so there’s no need to open a ticket about it. If something still isn’t working after Microsoft says it’s fixed, or anything looks off, reach out anytime. We’re happy to help.
We will update this post when Microsoft publishes an official explanation.
Sources
- PIX11: Thousands report outage with Microsoft Outlook and 365
- Downdetector on X
- Cybersecurity News: Microsoft Teams Outage Hits Users in North America
- Entireweb: Microsoft 365 status
- StatusGator: Microsoft 365 suite status
- Outage Status Now: Microsoft 365
- The Register: Microsoft blames a configuration change for Exchange Admin Center tumble
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