Key takeaways
- On Thursday, Nov. 12, 2026, Outlook, Teams, OneDrive and Copilot failed for businesses in at least 74 countries. It was a major, global outage, and service was still recovering Friday morning.
- Microsoft says it is not aware of any malicious activity. It cited elevated server load and servers that became unavailable, and applied a routing and authentication patch. Its full explanation is still to come.
- You cannot prevent a Microsoft outage. You can decide how much it costs you.
What we know so far
Microsoft said the problem began at 11:17 a.m. ET on Thursday, Nov. 12. It hit Outlook, Teams, Microsoft 365, OneDrive and Copilot, and more than a dozen Microsoft cloud services in all. NBC News reported that outage reports reached 74 countries and territories within about an hour, peaking at 19,650 reports a minute. A normal Thursday sees fewer than 15. Large companies in finance and shipping reported email and communication problems.
By Friday morning Microsoft reported “early signs of stabilization,” with recovery progress in Europe, North America and Asia Pacific. It also warned that some users could still see intermittent problems and that capacity had not fully returned to normal.
Microsoft said it is “not aware of any malicious activity.” It blamed elevated load on its servers, with other servers becoming unexpectedly unavailable, and applied an “upstream authentication/routing configuration component patch.” A full root cause will come in a Post-Incident Report. Until it arrives, treat any other explanation as a guess.
One detail matters to every business that runs on email: Microsoft extended its mail retry window to 48 hours, so delayed messages should be delivered once service recovers.
We were affected too
Network Essentials and our own clients were affected by this outage. We are writing this from the same side of it as you, not as an outside observer. What follows is what we think every business should have settled before the next one.
Why this matters even if you were not affected
Most small and mid-sized businesses in Charlotte run on Microsoft 365. Email, calendars, files, phone calls through Teams and sign-in all depend on the same service. When it stalls, work stops, even though nothing in your office is broken.
A cloud outage is not a hacking event and not your fault. It is still your problem on that day. The businesses that lose the least are the ones that decided in advance what happens next.
Five things to have ready before the next outage
1. A second way to reach your team.
If email and Teams are both down, how do you tell staff what is happening? Keep a group text list or a free messaging group, and keep it current. Test it once.
2. A second way to reach your customers.
Decide who calls your top clients when email is dark, and keep those phone numbers somewhere that is not in Outlook.
3. A named person who checks Microsoft’s status first.
Many “our internet is down” calls are actually a provider outage. One person who checks the Microsoft 365 service status page before anyone reboots anything saves an hour of guessing. Your IT provider should also be watching it for you.
4. Your own backup of Microsoft 365 data.
Microsoft keeps its service running. It does not promise to be your backup. A separate copy of your mailboxes, OneDrive and SharePoint files means you can still reach key data and recover from deletion, ransomware or a bad sync. See our guide to why three layers of backup matter.
5. A one-page continuity plan.
Who decides, who calls whom, and what each team does when email or files are unavailable for a day. It does not need to be long. It needs to exist and be known. Our business continuity planning guide walks through it.
What to do right now if you are still affected
- Check the Microsoft 365 service status page or Microsoft’s official status posts before changing anything on your side.
- Do not reset passwords or reinstall Outlook to fix a provider outage. It will not help and can create new problems.
- Tell your team and key customers by phone or text that email may be delayed. Delayed messages should still arrive.
- Be wary of any message claiming to be a “fix” or a “login to restore access” link during an outage. Attackers use big outages as cover for phishing.
- Write down what the outage cost you. It is the clearest way to judge whether your current plan is enough.
When to ask for help
If this outage showed you that your business has no plan, that is useful information, and it is cheaper to learn it now than during a worse event. We help Charlotte businesses set up managed Microsoft 365 support, backup and a simple continuity plan.
Network Essentials is a Charlotte managed IT provider with 24/7 On-Call Support. Call (704) 206-8900 or use the form below for a short, no-pressure review of how your business would handle the next outage.
