- Exchange Online & Outlook: Users face widespread mailbox access issues and significant email delivery delays across web, desktop, and mobile clients.
- Microsoft Teams: Core chat and calling remain operational, though calendar scheduling, meeting invites, contact syncing, and private/shared channel management are impaired.
- Microsoft 365 Copilot: Users experience failures loading Copilot Chat, receiving AI responses, and querying enterprise work data across apps.
- Microsoft Planner & To Do: Operational reliability issues disrupt task management and board loading.
- Power Apps: Intermittent authentication failures impact users logging into Power Apps and Field Service mobile applications.
- SharePoint Online: External file-sharing capabilities are restricted under specific tenant configurations, though direct internal file access remains functional.
- Microsoft Purview & Security: Data classification, Data Loss Prevention (DLP), eDiscovery, and Defender XDR policy evaluations face latency and portal loading errors.
A major service disruption impacting Microsoft infrastructure caused widespread Outlook access issues, email delivery backlogs, and performance degradation across core Microsoft 365 applications on Friday, November 13, 2026.
According to official status updates from the software giant, the outage is centered on services dependent on Exchange Online, creating cascading disruptions across Microsoft Teams, Copilot, Planner, Power Apps, SharePoint Online, Power BI, and Microsoft Purview. While Microsoft reported steady recovery progress across global data centers, enterprise users continue to experience intermittent service interruptions as engineering teams work to clear system backlogs.
Exchange Online at the Core of the Disruption
Microsoft confirmed that service features relying on Exchange Online dependencies account for the majority of the operational impact, while standalone cloud components remain unaffected.
Within Exchange Online, users are encountering errors accessing mailboxes across multiple connection protocols, including Outlook on the web, the desktop client via MAPI, Exchange ActiveSync (EAS), and REST-based connections. Outbound and inbound mail flow is also experiencing sustained latency.
To prevent message bounces and protect corporate communications while queues are cleared, Microsoft has implemented an extended 48-hour delivery timeout window for delayed emails as normal routing capacity is restored.
Microsoft Teams Retains Core Functions Amid Calendar Outages
According to Microsoft, core communication capabilities within Microsoft Teams—including joining voice and video meetings, group chats, and standard channel messaging—remain largely operational.
However, features integrated with Exchange Online are experiencing degradation, including:
- Viewing, scheduling, or editing calendar meetings and sending calendar invites
- Creating live or virtual town hall events
- Copilot integration queries referencing Outlook emails, calendars, and Microsoft 365 files
- Accessing read-receipt histories, adding participants to new chats, and syncing external contacts
- Creating or deleting private and shared channels
Copilot, Planner, and Power Apps Impacted
Enterprise productivity tools are facing varied levels of service degradation:
- Microsoft 365 Copilot: Users are unable to load Copilot Chat or generate responses on desktop and web clients, particularly when prompts query internal enterprise emails, calendars, or files.
- Microsoft Planner & To Do: Users report reliability failures when updating plans and tasks, alongside loading errors in Microsoft To Do.
- Power Apps: Intermittent authentication failures are preventing users from signing into the Power Apps and Field Service mobile apps. Microsoft advised affected users to rely on web-based versions and cautioned currently authenticated mobile users against signing out, clearing app caches, or reinstalling the apps until full service is restored.
Security, Governance, and Analytics Tools Face Bottlenecks
The outage extends beyond front-end productivity software into IT administration, data governance, and business intelligence platforms:
- Admin Centers & Intune: IT administrators report errors loading pages in the Microsoft 365 Admin Center and the Apps Admin Center (specifically Cloud Update, Cloud Policy, and Inventory). Microsoft Intune is also experiencing intermittent delays in device enrollment and compliance policy updates.
- Microsoft Purview & Defender: Portal loading issues and latency are impacting Data Loss Prevention (DLP), automated sensitivity labeling, eDiscovery tasks, audit log searches, and role-based access controls. Consequently, Defender for Office 365 workflows relying on Purview signals face policy evaluation delays.
- Microsoft Graph: API calls querying Exchange Online data (mail, calendars, contacts) are timing out, impacting automated team management and activity notifications.
- Power BI, Fabric & Cloud PCs: Users face errors exporting sensitivity-labeled reports to PDF or PowerPoint in Power BI and Microsoft Fabric. Universal Print job submissions are failing, and Windows 365 Cloud PC users utilizing Microsoft Purview Customer Key configurations are encountering connection errors. Microsoft 365 Education features—including Assignments, Reading Progress, and Speaker Progress—are also impacted.
Regional Recovery Progress Underway
In its latest operational update on Friday, Microsoft reported significant recovery progress across European infrastructure, citing improved availability and email delivery throughput across an expanding portion of affected servers.
Infrastructure in Japan remains comparatively stable, while North American regions are showing steady signs of recovery. Nevertheless, Microsoft cautioned that organizations may still encounter intermittent errors until mail queues are fully drained.
Microsoft stated that preliminary investigations show no evidence of malicious activity or cyberattack involvement. The company plans to publish a comprehensive post-incident review detailing the root cause and preventative remediation measures once full service stability is confirmed.
