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On November 12, 2026, shortly before 1:00 PM Eastern Time in the United States, Microsoft’s cloud services experienced a widespread outage affecting Outlook, Teams, SharePoint, and Copilot. The incident, which began on Thursday and continued into Friday, impacted users in Asia, Europe, and Australia, causing operational disruptions for businesses and governments. The cause was identified as high load on the infrastructure due to unexpected unavailable servers that failed automatic health checks.
Why it matters
The impact extended beyond the simple unavailability of productivity apps. Several operators experienced delays in official communications: Workhorse Group moved its quarterly earnings release from November 12 to November 16, while Richemont recorded a slight delay in disseminating its financial data. Air India had to temporarily redirect emails to continue receiving messages from customers, while confirming that flight operations were not compromised. Australian Minister for Home Affairs and Cybersecurity Tony Burke compared the situation to the 2024 incident caused by a defective CrowdStrike update.
The numbers
According to data reported in 2025, Copilot has nearly 100 million monthly active users. The new date set for Workhorse Group’s earnings release is November 16. Microsoft stated that the incident was not due to malicious activity, but to high load on the infrastructure caused by unexpected unavailable servers that failed automatic health checks.
What remains to be understood
At present, Microsoft has not provided a specific timeline for full service restoration. The exact cause of the initial failure of health checks on the servers remains described in general terms. Amazon Web Services communicated that its services are operating normally and attributed the reported outages to an unrelated problem elsewhere on the internet.
Sources: CNBC Top News, NPR Business.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice or an investment recommendation.
* Content created with the assistance of artificial intelligence systems.