The Outlook downturn is proving to be more complicated than expected. Several hours after the start of the disruptions which affected millions of users in various parts of the world, Microsoft admitted that the initial interventions to restore the functioning of its services are not producing the expected results.
The problem, which began on Thursday 12 November, mainly affects Outlook and Exchange Online email, but has also had repercussions on Teams, Copilot and various tools in the Microsoft 365 suite.
In the early hours of Friday 13 November, the company announced that it was still engaged in the search for alternative technical solutions. A situation that continues to create difficulties for private users, businesses and organizations that use Microsoft services on a daily basis.
Why does Outlook still not work? Microsoft explains what’s happening
Technical updates show that the problem is more complex than a simple temporary outage. According to Microsoft, some of the servers that manage email connections have started to register anomalies, becoming progressively unable to respond to user requests.
This caused a ripple effect: as some servers stopped working properly, traffic was redistributed to those still available, further increasing the load on the infrastructure.
To try to stabilize the situation, technicians attempted to restart the affected systems, change the distribution of connections and gradually bring the servers back online. The first measures, however, were not sufficient.
In updates released overnight, Microsoft acknowledged that changes introduced to improve the availability of the service were not producing the expected results.
The company is therefore evaluating further interventions to recover operational capacity and correct imbalances in traffic management.
We’re investigating reports of users experiencing issues accessing Exchange Online mailboxes through multiple connection methods in the Americas. More details can be found in the Microsoft 365 admin center under EX1550543.
— Microsoft 365 Status (@MSFT365Status) November 12, 2026
Outlook down, is it a hacker attack?
It is one of the questions that has been circulating the most since the outages began, especially considering the international scope of the interruption. At the moment, however, Microsoft has specified that it has not identified elements that suggest a malicious origin of the problem.
Charles Lamanna, a company executive, confirmed that there is no indication of a cyber attack behind the incident. This means that, at present, .
The technical checks are focusing on the functioning of the infrastructure and the difficulties encountered by the systems that manage the connections. The definitive cause of the accident, however, has not yet been clarified publicly.
Not just Outlook: what other Microsoft services are affected
The consequences of the failure extended far beyond email. In addition to difficulties accessing Outlook, Microsoft has reported possible problems with some features of Teams, Copilot, Microsoft 365 and other services connected to Exchange Online.
In particular, users may experience difficulties accessing email inboxes, delays in message delivery, problems with the calendar and anomalies in applications that use email data.
For Teams, for example, some functions related to meeting scheduling may be compromised, while Copilot may not be able to access the company information needed to respond to requests.
Not all features of these services, however, are necessarily unavailable: the impact depends on the systems involved and the connections used.
Over 130 thousand reports: Microsoft’s downturn affects companies and offices
The dimensions of the disruption emerged already in the first hours of the interruption. According to data collected by Downdetector, in the United States reports relating to Outlook exceeded 130 thousand at the most critical moment.
The problems have also emerged in Europe and the Asia-Pacific region, with consequences for companies, governments and organizations that use Microsoft products for communications and work management.
The number of reports does not necessarily correspond to the number of users actually involved, but it makes the extent of the incident clear.
When will Outlook work again?
Microsoft is proceeding with gradual interventions to bring the affected infrastructure back online, but the recovery does not appear uniform. Some servers that were initially restored showed new problems once they returned to managing user traffic.
For this reason, the company is evaluating further modifications and alternative configurations, trying to prevent the load on the infrastructure from causing further interruptions.
Those who continue to experience issues can check for updates on the official Microsoft Service Health page or, for business accounts, through the Microsoft 365 admin center.
