Microsoft Reports Early Capacity Improvement as Outlook, Teams and Copilot Remain Disrupted
Key Facts
Microsoft said in a Friday update that it had observed “early stabilization and capacity improvement” and “gradual improvement across several workloads” as it continued recovery efforts after the outage affecting Microsoft 365 services. The disruption included Outlook, Teams and Copilot, and users reported being unable to access their email. Signs of improvement came before service had fully returned to normal, with recovery levels varying across regions and some users continuing to encounter problems. The company said intermittent access and delayed email delivery could persist as it carried out mitigation measures. The update therefore focused on progress in restoring capacity, while parts of the affected service and infrastructure remained under remediation.
Recovery was broader in North America, where Microsoft said it had recorded “broader improvement” in the region. In Europe, the company reported “sustained improvement across most of” the continent, while it described signals in Asia-Pacific as “encouraging.” But this regional picture did not mean the outage’s effects had ended for all users, as the company expected intermittent access and delayed message delivery to continue for some. It said mitigation measures were still progressing across the remaining affected infrastructure. These regional differences leave service recovery uneven, even as capacity improves in parts of the system.
Microsoft said changes it had implemented to improve service resilience “did not go as expected” as it worked to identify and fix the points of failure. The company described its approach as “a deliberate approach to identifying and repairing affected infrastructure.” It also said it had no indication that the outage resulted from malicious activity. The statements outline the company’s response, from service changes to the gradual remediation of affected infrastructure. The company did not specify how many people were affected by the outage, saying the total number was unclear.
The disruption’s effects extended beyond individual user accounts to institutional communications and public services. AP reported that OpenAI and Anthropic had encountered problems connecting to Microsoft 365 tools, while government email in Singapore and some Supreme Court operations in the Philippines were affected. In Japan, authorities reported impacts on government IT infrastructure and took steps to secure alternative means of communication, including phones. AP also reported that some British police forces were unable to receive crime reports online. The National Pharmacy Association said some people could face delays in obtaining prescriptions because the National Health Service’s email systems were affected.
According to Downdetector data cited by AP, reports of problems accessing Outlook approached 130,000 after 1 p.m. Eastern time on Thursday. Reports then fell, while the outage continued to affect Microsoft 365 services. The measure showed the volume of complaints recorded on the outage-tracking platform at that time, while Microsoft said the total number of people affected was unclear. The company did not provide an overall figure for affected users. Delayed email delivery and intermittent access remained among the problems it warned could persist during recovery efforts.
Operational consequences were evident at Workhorse Group, which said it had rescheduled its third-quarter results and business outlook call from Thursday, November 12, 2026, to Monday, November 16. The company attributed the change to business disruptions caused by global Microsoft outages. Workhorse said its third-quarter results release would be issued before the rescheduled call. The postponement illustrates how the outage’s effects moved from disruption to email and collaboration tools to a change in a company’s investor communications schedule. It came as Microsoft said it was continuing to remediate affected environments and reduce the message backlog.
The importance of restoring service comes amid the scale of Microsoft 365’s commercial base: Microsoft said in January that it had more than 450 million paid commercial subscriptions. eToro analyst Josh Gilbert said investors may look past the outage for now, but repeated reliability problems could prompt IT departments to reconsider relying on a single provider. He added that the market wants Microsoft to “prove it can keep systems running before asking customers to spend more on Copilot.” This remains the analyst’s reading of market expectations for service reliability and Copilot spending. Microsoft said it would continue working to restore the remaining affected environments, prioritizing the reduction of email queues and message backlogs.