Microsoft Outage Today: Azure, Teams & Outlook Down Worldwide—Live Updates and Fix ETA

A global Microsoft outage is disrupting work and communications across industries on Thursday, 12 November 2026, after core cloud services suddenly went dark for millions of users. Microsoft 365, Teams, Outlook, OneDrive, Copilot, and large portions of Azure are all reporting “service degradation” or complete downtime, according to the company’s status dashboard and user reports that spiked on Downdetector just after 17:30 UTC. What’s affected right now • Microsoft 365 (including Exchange Online and SharePoint) • Microsoft Teams chat, meetings, and telephony • Outlook desktop, mobile, and web access • OneDrive file sync and sharing • Azure Portal, virtual machines, and key networking services • Microsoft Copilot generative-AI features inside Word, Excel, and Edge Users see error code 500 or repeated authentication loops when signing in, while Azure customers report virtual machines stuck in a “failed” state. The outage appears to be worldwide, with confirmed incidents across North America, Europe, India, and Australia. Microsoft’s response At 18:02 UTC the company posted: “We’re investigating a potential networking issue causing impact across multiple Microsoft 365 services. Further updates in 30 minutes.” Admins can track live incident MO637864 on status.microsoft.com; no ETA for full recovery has been published. In previous large-scale outages Microsoft has pointed to faulty routing changes or DNS updates, so network misconfiguration is once again the leading theory among independent cloud engineers monitoring BGP announcements. Business impact and user options • Email delays may violate compliance rules; consider activating backup SMTP relays if available. • Teams calls can be rerouted to alternative VOIP platforms such as Zoom or Google Meet. • Azure-hosted apps should fail over to secondary cloud regions if multi-region redundancy is configured; otherwise, expect elevated error rates. • Documents saved locally will sync automatically once services recover, but avoid editing shared files simultaneously to prevent version conflicts. How to check live status 1. Microsoft 365 Admin Center → Health → Service health 2. Azure Status page (azure.status.microsoft) 3. Downdetector or Outage.report community dashboards What to watch next • Root-cause analysis: Microsoft typically releases a Preliminary Post-Incident Report (PIR) within 72 hours. • Compensation: Under the Microsoft Online Services SLA, customers may qualify for service credits if uptime drops below 99.9 % this month. • Security: Although there is no evidence of a cyber-attack, admins should review sign-in logs for unusual activity once authentication services stabilize. Bottom line Until Microsoft isolates and reverses the faulty change, expect intermittent access to Outlook, Teams, and Azure resources. Plan for extended downtime windows and communicate alternate workflows to staff. Refresh the official status portals and social feeds for minute-by-minute updates, and document any incidental costs to claim SLA credits after service is restored.