Breaking: Microsoft platforms, including Outlook, suffering widespread outages

Topic:TechnologyPosted Fri 13 Nov 2026 at 6:29amFri 13 Nov 2026 at 6:29am, updated Fri 13 Nov 2026 at 6:47amFri 13 Nov 2026 at 6:47amMore than 120,000 users on outage tracker Downdetector reported problems accessing Outlook. (Reuters: Gonzalo Fuentes/File Photo)A widespread outage has hit Microsoft platforms, including Outlook, with many users encountering trouble using their email accounts and other errors across the tech giant's suite of apps.As of about 4:30am AEST, more than 120,000 users on outage tracker Downdetector reported problems accessing Outlook — with many saying they could not send and receive emails or were encountering delays.On Microsoft's Service Health Staus site, the company confirmed users may be unable to connect to multiple 365 services, including Exchange Online, Microsoft Teams, SharePoint Online, Copilot 365 and Defender XDR."We've determined that the elevated load isn't driven by an overall increase in traffic, but by a large number of servers being unexpectedly unavailable, which is shifting load onto the remaining infrastructure," the status update said."We're investigating what's causing these servers to become unavailable while we work to safely return them to service." Microsoft has paused all deployments, is moving additional traffic off the affected infrastructure, and is restarting affected servers to return them to service, the company said.OpenAI said it was investigating an issue with Microsoft connectors in which new connections may be broken and tools were not working as expected.Anthropic said it had identified an issue with an upstream provider affecting its Microsoft 365 connector.AP/Reuters