Technology 3 min read By Callum Montgomery
Microsoft 365 outage hits Outlook and Teams, businesses must claim credit themselves
A Microsoft 365 outage disrupted Outlook, Teams and other services for millions of users worldwide. Affected businesses may be eligible for a credit of up to 50 per cent, but it is not applied automatically.
A Microsoft 365 outage on Thursday, 12 November 2026, disrupted Outlook, Teams and other services across the company's platform. Affected businesses may be entitled to a credit of up to 50 per cent, but they will need to act to claim it, as the compensation is not applied automatically. Millions of users reported disruptions around the world.
For many people, email, Outlook and Teams were unavailable at the same time, leaving staff unable to send or receive messages in the ordinary way. The disruption reached public bodies and institutions that depend on these tools for day-to-day work. Police, sheriff and fire agencies in the United States and the United Kingdom lost access to email. Courts in Maine, New York City and Manchester were also affected, and some court proceedings were suspended or delayed.
The effects extended beyond government offices. Hospitals in Toronto and across the UK National Health Service faced communication problems at a time when staff rely on quick, reliable contact. Rail and airline passengers also reported difficulties receiving emails, including messages relating to their journeys. The full scale of the disruption is not yet clear, and the number of users actually affected remains unconfirmed.
Microsoft attributed the problem to a technical issue linked to a network capacity upgrade. The company said the outage was not a cyberattack and was not related to artificial intelligence. By Friday, Microsoft reported that services had broadly recovered and apologised to customers. Some services came back quickly, but enterprise issues lingered for some users after the wider recovery.
The episode has renewed attention on how much governments and organisations depend on a small number of technology providers. Microsoft has reported more than 450 million paid Microsoft 365 commercial seats, a scale that makes any service failure consequential across many sectors at once. Public-sector use of Microsoft products is extensive, which has raised concerns about concentration risk in digital infrastructure.
The outage also created an opening for fraud. Scammers posed as Microsoft staff in an attempt to steal login details from people anxious to restore access, a reminder that disruptions of this kind can be exploited by criminals. Businesses should be cautious about unsolicited requests for passwords or credentials.
The full economic cost of lost productivity is unknown, and the precise process for claiming the credit, along with eligibility criteria, has not been fully set out in the material available. Affected businesses are therefore advised to review the terms of their Microsoft agreement and check what action is required to make a claim.
Source: inc.com
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