What caused the November 2026 Microsoft outage?

As of November 13, 2026, Microsoft had not published a root cause. It said a large number of servers became unexpectedly unavailable, that there was no evidence of a cyberattack, and that it was rolling back a recent network change while restoring service.

Which Microsoft services were affected?

Outlook was hit hardest across web, desktop and mobile. Copilot was disrupted, and reports also described problems with Teams, Defender, Intune admin dashboards and some Cloud PCs. Problem reports came from 74 countries and territories.

Does Microsoft compensate businesses for outages?

Only in a limited way. Microsoft’s Service Level Agreement for Online Services pays out in service credits against your subscription when uptime falls below the commitment. It does not cover lost productivity or lost sales, so that cost stays with your business.

How should a business prepare for the next Microsoft 365 outage?

Set up a way to reach staff that does not run on Microsoft 365, such as a group SMS or phone tree. Keep offline copies of your incident runbook and vendor contacts, decide in advance what happens at the 2, 8 and 24 hour marks, and test the plan once a year with a short tabletop exercise.

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Cloud & Productivity

What the November 2026 Microsoft Outage Taught Us

At about 11 a.m. Toronto time on Thursday, November 12, Outlook stopped delivering mail. Within the hour, Teams meetings were dropping, Copilot was unresponsive, and IT teams who went to…