Microsoft outage enters a second day, hitting Outlook and other 365 services; shares fall before the open

A Microsoft 365 outage that began on Thursday, November 12, 2026, was still affecting Outlook email and other services on Friday morning, and the company's shares fell in premarket trading. Microsoft's service status page showed "service degradation" for Microsoft 365 in an entry last updated at 10:01 UTC on November 13, saying users "may be unable to connect to multiple Microsoft 365 services."

Update: Microsoft reports recovery progress

Added on November 13, 2026, at about 12:45 UTC. In an update shortly after 7 a.m. Eastern time (12:00 UTC) on Friday, Microsoft said it was making "encouraging recovery progress in Europe," with service availability and email delivery improving for some users, CNBC reported. The company said service was being "gradually restored" in the Asia Pacific region and that the situation in North America was "improving," according to the outlet. It still warned that users might be unable to connect to several Microsoft 365 products, including Outlook, and said intermittent problems were expected while recovery continued, CNBC reported.

Microsoft's status page still showed "service degradation" for Microsoft 365 when we read it at 12:31 UTC. The shares recovered part of their premarket fall: they traded near $516 at about 12:30 UTC, between 1.3% and 1.5% below Thursday's close, according to Yahoo Finance data. The rest of this article describes the situation earlier on Friday morning.

What is known about the outage

According to CNBC, connection problems began shortly before 1 p.m. Eastern time on Thursday, about 18:00 UTC, and continued into Friday. Email and related tools were unavailable through the Asian business day on Friday and across the European morning and the early US morning, the outlet reported.

Microsoft first blamed a traffic surge in part of its infrastructure and problems with a component that processes the health status of servers, CNBC said. In its early updates the company said a number of servers had become unexpectedly unavailable, which strained the rest.

In an update at about 5 a.m. Eastern time (10:00 UTC) on Friday, Microsoft said users might still be unable to connect to several Microsoft 365 products, including Outlook on the web and on desktop, according to CNBC. Most access to Teams was available, CNBC reported. The company said recovery was moving in phases and that it was seeing "incremental improvement in several workloads," but that full capacity had not been restored.

Microsoft also said it was extending the period in which delayed emails keep trying to be delivered to up to 48 hours, CNBC reported.

Who was affected

The outage reached companies and public services in several countries, according to CNBC's report:

• The UK's National Health Service said some of its services were affected and that patients should attend appointments as normal.
• Swiss luxury group Richemont published its results slightly late on Friday.
• Electric truck maker Workhorse Group moved its third-quarter results from November 12 to November 16, citing disruption from the outage.
• Air India said it had rerouted emails so that it could keep receiving customer messages, and that flights were not affected.

Amazon Web Services said its own services were "operating normally" and that an unrelated disruption elsewhere was causing inaccurate reports about its platforms, CNBC reported.

What is not known

Microsoft had not given a full explanation of the cause in the updates that CNBC reported. Australia's Home Affairs and Cyber Security Minister Tony Burke said Microsoft believes it is dealing with something in some ways similar to the 2024 CrowdStrike incident, according to Reuters as cited by CNBC. In that incident, a faulty software update caused a global outage, CNBC said. Microsoft's own updates, as reported, do not say that.

It is also not known how many customers were affected or when service will be fully restored.

Why it matters

Microsoft 365 is the company's package of email, office and collaboration software, and many companies and governments run their daily work on it. By our calculation, about 16 hours passed between the start that CNBC reported and Microsoft's status update at 10:01 UTC on Friday.

The share price move came before regular trading. Microsoft closed at $523.00 on Thursday, up 0.4% on the day, according to Yahoo Finance data. The outage had started during that session. The premarket price near $508 was read at 10:57 UTC and can change before the market opens at 14:30 UTC.

Microsoft's shares had already fallen about 4.4% between the close of $545.18 on Monday, November 9, and the close of $521.13 on Wednesday, November 11, the same Yahoo Finance data shows. The outage began on Thursday, the same day that Nvidia said its chief executive had resigned.

What it could mean for traders

Premarket trading is thin, so prices there can move more than they do in the regular session. The things to watch are Microsoft's next status updates, any statement on the cause, and whether the company says anything about credits or compensation for customers. It has not done so in the sources we read.

Companies that depend on Microsoft's email may also report delays. Two had already moved or delayed results by Friday morning, according to CNBC.