The disruption affected police forces, the NHS, companies, courts, and colleges.
The US-based firm confirmed this morning (November 14) that providers have been totally restored for all remaining affected prospects.
In an announcement on its Microsoft 365 standing web page, the corporate stated: “We’ve accomplished our efforts to deal with the underlying situation of the incident and restored service to the remaining impacted prospects and areas.
We’re deeply sorry for the disruption this incident has brought about our prospects and companions. We all know the belief they place in our providers and take that accountability extraordinarily critically. We’re seeing broad restoration and stability throughout our providers. This was a technical situation not associated to cyber or AI / brokers. The incident was launched by a difficulty throughout an earlier community capability improve that surfaced following a current community change. We’ve addressed the underlying situation and proceed to revive service to remaining prospects and areas. Given the dimensions of demand, we restored providers regularly, validating stability at every stage. Whereas this took longer, it helped guarantee a secure restoration. We’ll present a full post-incident report as soon as our assessment is full.
— Microsoft (@Microsoft) November 13, 2026
“Additional updates may be discovered at MO1550821 within the Microsoft 365 admin middle.”
The outage, which started round 6pm GMT on Thursday, November 12, disrupted electronic mail, messaging, and different Microsoft 365 providers.
The UK Authorities and others worldwide have been pressured to activate contingency plans.
Microsoft stated on Friday the disruption was resulting from a “technical situation not associated to cyber or AI brokers.”
Baroness Lloyd of Effra, the UK Authorities’s cyber minister, stated the issue primarily affected back-office capabilities.
Baroness Lloyd stated there had been “restricted stories of affect on frontline service supply” and the incident had been “inconvenient and disruptive”.
She confirmed she had spoken with Microsoft UK chief government Darren Hardman concerning the outage.
Monitoring web site Downdetector first confirmed a spike in customers reporting issues with Microsoft Groups within the UK at about 6.15pm on Thursday.
It recorded a surge in complaints, with greater than 130,000 customers within the US reporting issues with Outlook at its peak on Thursday night.
Thousands and thousands of its prospects have been unable to ship and obtain emails by way of Outlook, whereas Microsoft’s Copilot AI assistant, Groups and different Microsoft 365 providers have been additionally affected for a lot of.
Different AI chat platforms, together with OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude, have been disrupted.
How was the UK affected by the Microsoft outage this week?
Police forces in England and Wales stated on Friday that they might not obtain crime stories on-line.
NHS England stated employees had switched to “long-standing measures” to handle the outage, together with using paper information.
Rail passengers have been unable to entry e-tickets for his or her journeys as they could not open the emails of their Outlook inboxes.
Nationwide Rail warned travellers to make use of various strategies to entry their tickets.
A spokesman stated: “We’re conscious of the continued Microsoft world outage, which can be affecting prospects’ potential to entry their prepare tickets by way of their electronic mail inbox.
“If you happen to’re unable to find or entry your tickets by way of your electronic mail resulting from this situation, you should still be capable to entry your tickets by visiting the web site or app the place you bought your tickets from and logging into your account.
‼️We’re conscious of the continued Microsoft world outage, which can be affecting prospects’ potential to entry their prepare tickets by way of their electronic mail inbox. 🔗Newest Data and recommendation may be discovered right here:
— Nationwide Rail (@nationalrailenq) November 13, 2026
“We advocate doing this earlier than you journey to make sure you have your tickets available on your journey.
“This will not be attainable in case you checked out as a visitor – please contact your ticket retailer straight if you’re unable to entry your tickets.
“In case you are nonetheless unable to entry your ticket, please contact a member of onboard employees or station employees for recommendation.”
Different rail operators, together with Southeastern, Chiltern Railways and London North Japanese Railway (LNER), reported related issues with emailed tickets.
Did the worldwide Microsoft 365 outage have an effect on you this week? Tell us within the feedback beneath.