Microsoft global outage: Is a cyberattack behind major service disruption? Tech giant’s top executive clears the air as millions of users face trouble using Outlook, Teams

Millions around the world were left without multiple key Microsoft services, including Outlook, after the global tech giant was hit by a widespread outage on Thursday (November 12, 2026). Many users faced trouble in accessing their email accounts and also encountered other errors in Teams meeting tools, among other platforms across the company's suite of apps.

According to reports, the disruptions were first reported after midday Eastern time and continued into the night, impacting many companies and some government operations.

Amid the outage, Charles Lamanna, executive vice president of Copilot, Agents, and Platform at Microsoft said that it was not caused by a cybersecurity breach.


“We regret that today’s outages caused disruptions for our customers, and we are working to address the issue. We will continue to share more information as soon as we have it, and for now I can confirm that there is no indication this is the result of malicious or cyber activity,” Lamanna said in a post on X late on Thursday.




As many as 130,000 users on outage tracker Downdetector reported problems accessing Outlook just after 1 pm EST, as reported by news agency AP.


Also Read: How Microsoft is trying to fix global outage as Outlook, Teams and Microsoft 365 remain disrupted


According to the news agency, fresh reports have since fallen from that peak, but many said they couldn't send and receive emails or had trouble loading their inboxes altogether. Besides Outlook and Teams, thousands also reported issues with Microsoft's AI assistant Copilot and wider Microsoft 365 services.