Outlook is DOWN everywhere

There are strong indications of a widespread Outlook/Outlook.com sign-in outage today, November 12, 2026, so avoid resetting passwords or changing account settings and monitor Microsoft’s service health while its engineers investigate. ^1^

Check the current incident

1. Open the public Microsoft service health status page. ^2^
2. For the work account, ask your organization’s Microsoft 365 administrator to open: Microsoft 365 admin center → Health → Service health.
3. Under Active issues Microsoft is working on, open the Outlook or Exchange Online incident to see its impact, status, and Microsoft’s latest update. Tenant Service health is more specific than the public page. ^3^
4. If Microsoft has posted an incident, no local repair or separate support case is required; wait until its status becomes Service restored, then try each account again. ^4^

Multiple unrelated personal and work accounts failing simultaneously makes a service incident much more likely than all accounts independently developing password problems. It does not, however, establish that every Outlook user worldwide is affected.

Tell Microsoft if no incident appears

For the work account, the Microsoft 365 administrator should:

1. Go to Health → Service health.
2. Select Report an issue.
3. Describe the affected service, start time, sign-in error, affected clients, and approximate number of users.
4. Track Microsoft’s response under Reported issues.

Microsoft uses these reports to correlate failures across organizations and may publish a new incident or advisory. The administrator can also open a support request if the issue is absent from Service health. ^3^

For personal Outlook.com accounts, direct sign-in assistance from the Outlook.com team is limited. After service health returns to normal:

• If an account still cannot sign in, use the Microsoft account sign-in helper.
• If an account can sign in, select Help → Help, search for the problem, then scroll to Still need help? → Yes to request email support.
• In Outlook for iOS or Android, select account menu/Inbox → ? → Contact Outlook Mobile Support. ^5^

Do not change passwords merely because of this incident. If the status becomes green but only one account remains inaccessible, then use the sign-in helper because that would indicate a separate account-specific problem. ^6^

References

1. Is Outlook down? Possible Microsoft outage locks down email inboxes.
2. Microsoft service health status
3. How to check Microsoft 365 service health
4. Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365 & Power Platform incident readiness for Microsoft Engage Center
5. How to get support for Outlook.com | Microsoft Support
6. How to sign in to Hotmail | Microsoft Support