When the power goes out across a whole neighbourhood, nobody starts by rewiring their own house. People check whether the neighbours' lights are out too, light a few candles, and carry on with what they can until the power returns. A worldwide email outage calls for the same calm order: confirm it is not only you, keep the business talking to clients another way, and let the provider restore the service.
In short, Microsoft 365 had a worldwide outage in the early hours of Friday 13 November 2026, Malaysia time, which stopped many businesses from reaching Outlook email, Teams and SharePoint. The fault was on Microsoft's own servers, so there is little to fix on your side. Emails sent to you during the outage are usually delivered late instead of being lost. The useful work today is keeping clients informed, and watching for fake emails that use the outage as bait.
Is Microsoft Down? What Happened This Week
Yes, for many users. From the early hours of Friday 13 November 2026, Malaysia time, Microsoft 365 users in many countries could not reach Exchange Online email, Teams or SharePoint. Microsoft said a number of its servers had become unexpectedly unavailable, straining the rest, and it brought them back in stages. At the time of writing, recovery was still gradual.
Key Points
- The outage affected Microsoft 365 users worldwide, including Outlook email, Teams, SharePoint and Copilot.
- Microsoft said the cause was servers becoming unexpectedly unavailable, and that it was not driven by an increase in traffic.
- Emails sent to you during the outage are usually delivered late, because the sending servers keep trying for hours or days.
- Criminals often send fake emails about a big outage, so any message asking you to "re-verify" or "restore" your Microsoft account needs extra care.
- The best preparation for the next outage is a short plan your team agrees on now, whichever email provider you use.
What You Can Do Today
- Check Microsoft's own status page at status.cloud.microsoft before changing anything on your computer or your account.
- Tell clients and suppliers by phone or WhatsApp when an urgent email may be delayed, and agree how you will confirm it.
- Leave Outlook and your settings as they are. Reinstalling the app, adding the account again or changing settings does not fix a problem on Microsoft's servers, and it can create new ones.
- Check the Outbox in the Outlook app before writing an email again. Messages written during the outage can wait there and send once the connection returns.
- Treat any email, SMS or call that offers to restore your account, for a fee or for your login details, as a scam.
If someone in your team has already clicked a suspicious link, our free Business Security Quick Check lists the first steps to take, on one page.
Is Any Email Lost?
Usually not. When a receiving mail service cannot accept a message, the server that sent it keeps the message in a queue and tries again later. The internet's email standard recommends that senders keep trying for at least four to five days, although the actual setting differs from one email service to another, from several hours to about a week. If a sending server gives up, it returns a notice to the sender saying the email was not delivered.
So most emails sent to you during the outage should arrive late, as the service recovers. For anything important, such as a purchase order or a payment confirmation, ask the sender whether they received a delay or failure notice, and to resend only if they did.
Fake Emails Follow Big Outages
Criminals take advantage of a worldwide outage, because everyone is expecting messages about it. After the global CrowdStrike outage in July 2024, the US cyber agency CISA and the UK's National Cyber Security Centre both warned that criminals were sending phishing emails that used the outage as bait. The same pattern is likely now.
- An email asking you to "re-verify" your Microsoft account, or to sign in to "restore" your mailbox.
- A "fix" to download, or a page that asks you to paste a command to repair Outlook.
- A call or message from someone claiming to be Microsoft support, offering help for a fee.
Before acting on any of these, open the sender details and check that the domain really belongs to the company it claims to be. When in doubt, go to Microsoft's status page yourself instead of following a link.
A Simple Plan for the Next Outage
Every large email provider has outages from time to time, and no provider can honestly promise that it will never go down. What makes the difference for a business is whether its team already knows what to do. Agree these points once, and keep them outside email:
| Prepare | Why it helps |
|---|---|
| A second way to reach the team, such as a WhatsApp group or a phone list | Staff are told what is happening, even when email and Teams are down |
| Phone numbers of key clients and suppliers, kept outside your email | Urgent orders and payments can still be confirmed |
| One person who checks the provider's status page and tells everyone | One clear update, instead of every staff member trying their own fixes |
| A short message for clients, written in advance | Clients hear from you first, in a calm and consistent way |
| Two people with administrator access to your email account | A decision never waits for one person who is away |
| The documents needed for the next day or two, available offline on one computer | Work that does not depend on email can carry on |
How We Help With Business Email at Valse
At Valse Technologies, we host business mailboxes for the companies we work with, and as a .my accredited registrar we look after the domain records that their email depends on. When a client's email stops, our team first checks where the problem is: at the email provider, in the domain records or in the mailbox itself, so the client knows quickly what to do and what to tell its own clients. We believe every business should know what to do when its email stops, whichever provider it uses. You can read more about our website design and development.
Want a clear view of how ready your business is for a day like this? Take the free RIDE Digital Scorecard, or talk to us today.