Microsoft said its major software services were improving on November 13, 2026, after an outage disrupted organizations across multiple countries for a second day. According to IT Home’s report citing Bloomberg, Microsoft said at about 9 a.m. New York time that its email backlog had fallen substantially and was close to normal, although more than 20 products and services could still show errors.
The disruption began on the afternoon of November 12, local time. Users reported meeting invitations that did not arrive and web pages that did not respond. Microsoft issued frequent recovery updates, including steps to investigate the failure and move user traffic to other servers, but reported improvements were followed by further deterioration.
The cause had not been determined. Microsoft said a core process on some servers stopped responding under excessive load, while continuing server errors hampered its initial repair efforts. It said it would provide more detail after the outage ended. The report said there was no evidence of malicious activity.
Downdetector received hundreds of thousands of reports from Microsoft users in more than 70 countries. The effects extended beyond email and chat to cybersecurity software, file sharing and system-management tools. IT Home reported disruptions affecting healthcare communications in the UK, traders and government offices in Asia, and email at Euronext. Japan’s Finance Ministry said it could not receive email for much of the day; Australia’s central bank said critical operations remained running despite Outlook being unavailable in several departments. New Zealand’s immigration department suspended processing of all visa applications.
Some businesses also postponed earnings releases. A person familiar with the matter said the outage prevented clothing group PVH from holding planned conversations with some employees in Asia about a restructuring that the company said would cut about 4% of its global workforce.