Microsoft Outage Disrupts Outlook and Teams

A Microsoft outage that began on Thursday evening, 12 November 2026, was still affecting email and office tools across Europe on Friday, 13 November. The status below is as of about 14:00 German time (CET) on Friday. Microsoft reports progress, but it has not said when everything will work normally again.

What happened in the Microsoft outage

Problems started in the early evening German time. Heise reported that an unexpectedly large number of servers failed, and the servers that stayed online became overloaded. Microsoft told the press that the extra load did not come from a rise in normal traffic, and that some servers failed automated health checks. Netzwelt counted more than 2,000 reader reports by 07:00 on Friday, with problems listed in Frankfurt, Munich, Düsseldorf and Berlin.

Microsoft has not publicly explained why the servers failed. ZDF reported that a process which sets up secure connections became overloaded, and that Microsoft reversed a recent configuration change that coincided with the start. Microsoft executive Charles Lamanna said in a post on X that there was no indication of a cyberattack, and Microsoft says it has found no malicious activity.

What still does not work

Exchange Online, the service behind many Outlook mailboxes at companies, schools and offices, was hit hardest. Users could not reliably open their mailboxes, and incoming mail was delayed. Copilot, the AI assistant inside Microsoft 365, was disrupted as well, and NBC News listed Intune device management among the affected services. Teams chats and video calls mostly worked, according to Microsoft, but the Teams calendar and some channel functions did not.

On Friday Microsoft spoke of "early stabilization" and of progress in Europe, Japan and North America. ZDF reported at 13:26 on Friday that servers brought back online sometimes failed again once traffic reached them, and that some countermeasures had not worked as hoped. Microsoft extended the retry window for delayed emails to 48 hours, so messages that were held back should still be delivered. It promised a full report on the cause after recovery.

Was Azure affected by the Microsoft outage?

Reports disagree. Netzwelt wrote that Azure, Microsoft's cloud platform for developers and companies, was spared, and the Microsoft status listing quoted by NBC News showed no Azure issues on Friday morning. Windows Central filed its live coverage under its Azure section, but the text available did not confirm an Azure failure. Treat any claim that Azure was down as unconfirmed for now.

CNBC reported that Amazon Web Services said its services were operating normally, even though some users reported problems with it on outage-tracking sites. The cause appears to sit inside Microsoft 365 itself.

Impact in Germany

The federal government sees significant effects on German companies, ZDF reported on Friday. Deutsche Börse said securities trading continued as normal, and rail and air traffic were reported as undisturbed. Internationally, the outage hit hospitals, police forces, city governments and companies such as Maersk and Aviva, according to NBC News and CNBC. No German outlet we checked reported a specific failure at a German public office or university, but any organisation that runs its mail on Microsoft 365 could have been affected.

Expect further delays on Friday afternoon and over the weekend while queues of old mail are cleared. A person who did not get an answer on Thursday evening or Friday may simply be waiting for a delayed message.

What the Microsoft outage means for you

To check the status, administrators can open the Microsoft 365 admin center, and everyone can use status.cloud.microsoft or the Microsoft 365 Status account on X. Outage-tracking sites such as Downdetector and the netzwelt outage map show how many users report problems, but they only measure reports, not the official cause.

If Outlook on your computer fails, try Outlook on the web or the mobile app, since they can behave differently during a partial failure. For urgent questions, call instead of relying on Teams. Netzwelt also suggests another email client or another meeting tool for a short time. If you must send a document to your employer or to an authority such as the Ausländerbehörde (the immigration office), send it, keep the sent copy or screenshot, and send it again by another route if you hear nothing. Our guide on how to reduce visits to the Ausländerbehörde explains what can be handled without an appointment.

Employees should tell their employer promptly if a deadline or a shift handover was affected. There is no general right to extra time because of an outage at a software provider, so a short written note helps. See our overview of employment contracts and rights in Germany for the basics. Finally, be careful with unexpected messages. German cyber law expert Dennis-Kenji Kipker told ZDF that scammers may exploit the outage with phishing mails asking for logins or pushing fake "update" patches, even after the problem is solved. Only use official sites that you type in yourself.