Representative image. Rameshng, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons
Why it matters
Office email, meetings and calendars for many Indian companies run on Microsoft 365, and even airline customer support went quiet. Emails delayed by the outage may show a later time than when they were sent, which matters for anything with a deadline.
Microsoft says the outage that knocked out Outlook, Teams and Copilot for users in more than 70 countries is over. In its final status update, sent early on Saturday, 14 November 2026, the company said it had finished work on the underlying issue and restored service, the Times of India reported.
In India, the Microsoft outage reached airline customer support. IndiGo warned that its email support was affected and asked passengers who needed urgent help to use its website or app, India Today reported. Akasa Air’s email support was also hit, according to the Times of India, while Air India rerouted its email traffic and said its flights were running normally.
How long the Microsoft outage lasted
The trouble began on Thursday, 12 November, when users in the Americas could not open their Exchange Online mailboxes. Exchange Online is the Microsoft service that runs business email for Outlook. Microsoft first acknowledged the problem at 5:54 pm GMT, which was 11:24 pm in India, and 13 minutes later warned that users in any region could be affected.
The reports do not agree on how long the Microsoft outage lasted. The Times of India put it at more than 24 hours; India Today said more than 36. Neither gave the exact time of Microsoft’s final update, so NewsPlainly has not made its own count. The country figure differs a little too: India Today said more than 70, while the Times of India counted at least 74.
| When (IST) | What happened |
|---|---|
| 12 Nov, 11:24 pm | Microsoft acknowledges mailbox problems first seen in the Americas |
| 12 Nov, 11:37 pm | It warns that users in any region could be affected |
| 13 Nov | Asia Pacific is among the first regions to stabilise, followed by Europe and North America |
| 14 Nov, early morning | Microsoft says the underlying issue is addressed and service restored |
What broke, according to Microsoft
A Microsoft spokesperson said the Microsoft 365 fault “was introduced by an issue during an earlier network capacity upgrade that surfaced following a recent network change”, the Times of India reported. The company said it was “a technical issue not related to cyber or AI/agents”, ruling out a cyberattack.
Put simply, the account Microsoft gave in its updates runs in four steps:
- Some servers failed automatic health checks and dropped out.
- Their work shifted to the servers still running, which then came under strain.
- A core process on those servers that handles secure connections was overwhelmed, so they stopped answering requests.
- Servers brought back online could fail again as soon as traffic returned.
Microsoft’s first posts on X had blamed “elevated load”. Hours later it said traffic had not actually gone up. Engineers limited some traffic, rolled servers back to an earlier setup, patched an authentication (login) and routing component and added extra virtual machines, the Times of India reported.
Why email took longest to recover
Email made the repair of the Outlook outage slower. Mail servers outside Microsoft keep retrying messages they could not deliver, so restored servers met a queue of waiting mail. Microsoft extended its email timeout window to 48 hours so that messages sent during the outage would not be lost, and brought services back in stages.
Teams chats and meetings largely recovered earlier than the Outlook outage cleared, India Today reported, but calendar and scheduling features that depend on Exchange Online stayed patchy. Personal services were hit too, among them Outlook.com, OneDrive, OneNote and Microsoft To Do.
One detail matters for anyone checking their inbox: queued emails carry the time they were delivered, not the time they were sent. A message stamped 13 November may have been written on the night of 12 November, the Times of India noted.
What Microsoft has promised next
Microsoft said it is “deeply sorry for the disruption” and is still watching its systems and email queues, India Today reported. It has promised a full post-incident report on the Microsoft 365 failure once its review is complete.
The scale explains the reach. Microsoft said in January that it had more than 450 million paid commercial subscriptions to its 365 services. Outside India, staff of the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) switched to paper records and some companies in Japan went back to fax, according to the Times of India. OpenAI and Anthropic also reported problems with their Microsoft 365 connectors, which link their AI tools to workplace email and files. More technology stories are on NewsPlainly Tech.
Frequently asked questions
Is the Microsoft outage over?
Yes. Microsoft said early on 14 November 2026 that it had addressed the underlying issue and restored Outlook, Teams, Copilot and other Microsoft 365 services.
What caused the Microsoft outage?
Microsoft said a problem from an earlier network capacity upgrade surfaced after a recent network change. It said the fault was not a cyberattack and not caused by AI.
Was India affected by the Microsoft outage?
Yes. IndiGo and Akasa Air reported email support problems, and Air India rerouted its email to keep customer messages coming in, according to the Times of India and India Today.