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

Microsoft is scrambling to restore Outlook, Teams and other Microsoft 365 services after a global outage disrupted businesses, government departments and users across multiple countries. The company has tried to bring the affected servers back online, but its initial recovery attempts have not worked as expected.

The Guardian cited its latest update and predicted that there are few signs that the outage will end soon. Microsoft said it was scaling up virtual machines to increase capacity and reduce the load on affected infrastructure. It is also identifying servers stuck in an abnormal state and trying to detect the exact cause.

“Current actions we are taking include scaling up virtual machines to increase capacity and reduce load,” Microsoft said in an update cited by the outlet. The company added that it was encountering problems with machines “stuck in a bad state”, which is preventing the changes from syncing as expected.


As of 12:47 am EST on November 13, 2026, the outage tracker website Downdetector shows over 3000 outage reports across the United States. At its peak, it was close to 50,000.

The initial fix is not working as expected

Microsoft acknowledged that the changes it had applied to improve service availability did not deliver the expected results. “We've monitored the status of the changes applied to improve serviceability and confirmed that change is not taking as expected,” the company said in an update quoted by The Guardian.

Microsoft added that it was identifying alternative approaches to increase capacity amid persistent traffic management imbalances.

Microsoft outage not from a cyberattack

The tech giant has ruled out a cyberattack as the cause of the disruption. Company executive Charles Lamanna said there was no indication that the outage resulted from malicious or cyber activity.

“We regret that today's outages caused disruptions for our customers, and we are working to address the issue,” Lamanna said in an X post. He added that “for now I can confirm that there is no indication this is the result of malicious or cyber activity.”


The disruption has primarily affected services connected to Microsoft Exchange Online, the company's cloud-based email platform that powers Outlook for many Microsoft 365 users.