Technology, AI & Cyber
Outlook outage hits 74 countries, territories: tracker
Microsoft said it was seeing progress in stabilising Outlook and other Microsoft 365 services after a global outage hit users in 74 countries and territories, disrupted airline email support in India and paused visa processing in New Zealand.
The company attributed the disruption to elevated load on infrastructure across multiple regions and said it was not aware of malicious activity causing the incident. In a 0730 GMT update, Microsoft said a software patch was producing positive results for server stability and that it was working to expand it to servers supporting active regions coming online.
The disruption affected Outlook email and also drew thousands of user reports for Teams and Copilot, according to Downdetector, which said Microsoft products were knocked out in 74 countries and territories. Disruption reports on Downdetector were declining by 0900 GMT.
Microsoft had earlier said changes applied to improve service were not working as expected. It has also paused deployments, moved traffic away from affected infrastructure and restarted affected servers during the outage.
IndiGo and Akasa Air said their email support services were affected and that they might not receive customer emails. Immigration New Zealand said it paused processing all visa applications until further notice because of the global Microsoft outage. Japan's economy, trade and industry minister Ryosei Akazawa said there was no doubt the outage would have a significant impact.
Microsoft 365 is the company's cloud subscription service that includes Outlook and Teams.
Update ·
Microsoft said at 0730 GMT that a software patch was producing positive results for server stability.
Microsoft said it was working to expand the patch to servers supporting active regions coming online.
Immigration New Zealand said it paused processing all visa applications until further notice because of the global Microsoft outage.
IndiGo and Akasa Air said their email support services were affected and customer emails might not be received.
Japan's economy, trade and industry minister Ryosei Akazawa said the outage would have a significant impact.
Downdetector disruption reports were declining by 0900 GMT.
Source note: AFP news report published on 13 November 2026 at 09:34:18 UTC.
Update ·
Microsoft said it was not aware of any malicious activity causing the Outlook service disruption.
Source note: AFP news report published on 13 November 2026 at 07:34:29 UTC.
Update ·
Microsoft said changes applied to improve service were not working as expected.
Microsoft said it was seeking alternative ways to increase capacity.
Downdetector reported the outage affected Microsoft products in 74 countries and territories.
New Zealand's foreign ministry said the outage affected its ability to receive emails and also affected its embassies, consulates and representative offices.
Microsoft said shortly after 6 pm Eastern Time that it was seeing limited recovery as it routed traffic away from affected servers.
Source note: AFP news report published on 13 November 2026 at 05:18:02 UTC.
Uncertainty notes
Microsoft had not said when service was expected to return to normal.
The full number of affected users was not established.
Source
AFP news report published on .