Microsoft Sees Early Capacity Improvement as Service Outage Extends Into Nov. 13

Key Facts

Microsoft said on Nov. 13 that recovery efforts following its service outage were showing initial stabilization and improved capacity, with some workloads gradually improving, while service health remained inconsistent and capacity below normal levels, according to the Associated Press. The outage extended into business hours in the Asia-Pacific region and lasted about 12 hours as of the time of Reuters’ report. The company said it had seen "gradual improvement across several workloads," but that did not mean all services had returned to normal performance. The disruption affected a wide range of Microsoft 365 offerings tied to Exchange Online and email. Users reported outages affecting Outlook, Teams and the Copilot AI assistant, according to AP.

The improvement followed attempts that failed to achieve sustained recovery in regions where changes had been applied to affected servers. Reuters quoted Microsoft as saying the changes "did not lead to sustained recovery," despite partial recovery in some of those regions. The company also said changes it made to improve serviceability did not produce the expected results, then continued restoration measures in stages, according to AP. Microsoft used a gradual approach to identify and repair the affected infrastructure. The company added that there was no indication the outage was caused by malicious activity.

The impact extended beyond individual users to government agencies and businesses in Asia. Singapore’s Government Technology Agency said government email was down, while the Supreme Court of the Philippines reported that some operations, including responding to emails, were affected, according to AP. In Japan, an official said the outage affected government information technology infrastructure. He added that authorities had prepared alternative means of communication, including phones, to deal with the disruption to regular communication channels. The outage’s reach into government email and courts showed how a disruption to productivity services can hinder the daily work of institutions that rely on them.

AP counted more than 130,000 reports of problems on Thursday, Nov. 12, 2026, with reports continuing to come in after their numbers declined. The outage extended into business hours in Asia-Pacific, according to Reuters, while some services remained in recovery. Workhorse Group postponed its third-quarter results announcement, scheduled for Nov. 12, to Nov. 16, citing business disruptions caused by the Microsoft outage, according to Reuters. The delay offers an example of operational effects extending to corporate business schedules, alongside disruptions to email and collaboration tools. No verified data on Microsoft’s closing share price during this period was included in the available facts.

Service reliability is particularly important as its business user base expands; Microsoft said in January that it had more than 450 million paid commercial subscriptions to Microsoft 365, according to AP. This was the second disruption to Microsoft 365 services in 2026, according to Reuters, raising questions among corporate customers about reliability. Australian Home Affairs and Cybersecurity Minister Tony Burke described the problem as similar in some respects to the CrowdStrike outage, saying the impact was concentrated in email systems. Burke said what authorities were dealing with "is largely concentrated in email systems." An analyst at eToro said repeated reliability problems could prompt IT departments to review their increasing reliance on a single provider and could lead to greater scrutiny before more is spent on Copilot. He added that the market will want Microsoft to prove it can keep its services running before asking customers to spend more on Copilot.