As of now, Microsoft has not been able to restore the downed system to normal operation and is urgently seeking ways to increase system capacity.
The outage affecting Microsoft's Outlook email and other Microsoft 365 services has not yet been resolved, even after more than nine hours since the company acknowledged the problem on the afternoon of Thursday, 12 November 2026, Eastern U.S. time, or about 01:00 on 13 November, Thailand time.
Most recently, Microsoft stated that the phased fixes implemented so far have not achieved the expected results, and it is exploring other methods to increase system capacity.
Microsoft’s Microsoft 365 Status social media account, which has been providing updates throughout the day, posted shortly after 22:00 Eastern U.S. time (10:00 on 13 November Thailand time) that Microsoft has been monitoring the impact of recent adjustments intended to improve service but found the results unsatisfactory. They are therefore pursuing alternative approaches to expand system capacity because traffic distribution remains imbalanced.
Microsoft first reported before 13:00 Eastern U.S. time (around 01:00 Thailand time) that it was investigating user reports of inability to access online mailboxes. Initially, Microsoft said the problem affected users in the Americas but later updated that users worldwide might be impacted. Microsoft then took several simultaneous measures: pausing all new system deployments, rerouting traffic away from problematic infrastructure, and restarting affected servers to restore service. By about 18:00 Eastern U.S. time (06:00 Thailand time), the company announced some servers were back online and stable, but later discovered those servers could become unresponsive again once traffic resumed, prompting further efforts to address this.
Microsoft explained that system load increased because many servers were unavailable, so remaining servers had to handle additional traffic. Moreover, affected servers had not yet passed automated health checks. Services Microsoft indicated might be impacted include Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, Microsoft 365 Copilot, Microsoft Defender XDR, Planner, To Do, and Intune.
Downdetector, a website that tracks system outages, recorded about 130,000 user reports of Outlook issues shortly after 13:00 Eastern U.S. time (around 01:00 Thailand time). Microsoft Teams, which also experienced early problems, was reported by Microsoft to have returned to normal operation after mitigation measures.
The impact extended to public sector services; for example, New York City's Emergency Management Office warned residents that email communications with city agencies and online services relying on Microsoft systems might be temporarily delayed or disrupted, affecting email sending, agency responses, and access to some online services.