cannot access Outlook or Copilot

Microsoft 365 business outage alerts are primarily published to tenant administrators through the Microsoft 365 Service health dashboard rather than sent automatically to every Outlook or Copilot user; an administrator must enable email or mobile notifications.

Check whether your organization was affected

Ask your Microsoft 365 administrator to:

1. Sign in to the Microsoft 365 admin center.
2. Go to Health > Service health.
3. Check both:
   • Active issues Microsoft is working on
   • Issue history, which contains incidents and advisories affecting the tenant from the previous 7 or 30 days.
4. Open any Outlook, Exchange Online, or Copilot incident to review its incident ID, estimated start time, user impact, updates, and resolution status.

If the problem is not listed, the administrator should select Report an issue on the Service health page. Microsoft compares the report with telemetry and reports from other organizations and may publish an incident or advisory if the problem originated with the service.^1^

There is no matching incident on the available public status information that confirms the reported Outlook/Copilot problems on November 12–13, 2026. Social-media reports can indicate that others experienced similar symptoms, but they do not establish whether the cause was one Microsoft incident or whether it affected your tenant. If the admin center itself cannot be reached, use the public Microsoft service health status page.^2^

Enable future alerts

A Microsoft 365 administrator can configure incident notifications as follows:

1. Open Microsoft 365 admin center > Health > Service health.
2. Select Customize > Email.
3. Enable Send me email notifications about service health.
4. Enter up to two email addresses.
5. Select:
   • Incidents and/or advisories
   • The services to monitor, including the relevant Outlook/Exchange and Copilot services.
6. For one active incident only, open it and select Manage notifications for this issue.

Each administrator has a separate two-address limit. The Microsoft 365 Admin mobile app can also provide push notifications.^1^

Ordinary users generally will not receive these tenant service-health messages directly. Your organization’s administrator or help desk needs to relay them unless users have been assigned an administrative role that can view Service health.

About the missing Copilot chats

If these were chats in the personal Copilot app, Microsoft documents that eligible chats may temporarily be absent while content moves to the updated app. Check that Copilot is using exactly the same Microsoft, Google, or Apple sign-in method as before; personal and work/school accounts remain separate. Follow any migration message or link displayed in the app. Microsoft also says to sign in to the updated Copilot app by December 31, 2026 to preserve eligible content.^3^

If the missing chats belong to a work or school account, that personal-app migration explanation does not establish the cause. Have the tenant administrator check Service health and report the issue with:

• The approximate start and recovery times
• Whether Outlook on the web was also unavailable
• Whether Copilot failed in Outlook only or across all entry points
• Screenshots and exact error text
• The affected account type, without posting account details publicly

For a persistent Copilot-app issue, select … > Send feedback > Report a problem and include the time, device, operating system, and a screenshot.^3^

References

1. How to check Microsoft 365 service health
2. Microsoft service health status
3. Troubleshoot your content in the updated Copilot app