Microsoft Word Outage

Question

Microsoft Word Outage

dbat 0

Microsoft Word is not working either, but I have not seen it on any lists, so I am commenting to ensure that it is being investigated and worked on as well

Sincerely, someone who has a huge paper due this Sunday and cannot access or work on it

Ron Barker 2,380 Reputation points

2026-11-13T08:04:46.2066667+00:00

It is being reported on UK television a Microsoft outage affecting millions of users. It is a pity that it is not reported on the forum. It is not affecting me and probably millions of other users.

2 answers

Your answer

Ron Barker 2,380 Reputation points

2026-11-13T08:04:46.2066667+00:00

It is being reported on UK television a Microsoft outage affecting millions of users. It is a pity that it is not reported on the forum. It is not affecting me and probably millions of other users.

Answer 1

DaveM121 948.5K Independent Advisor

Hi, please provide some more information on this problem you are experiencing, please provide a screenshot of the error you see in Word, even though there is a huge world-wide outage, if you are using the Office apps installed on your PC, you should be able to use the Office apps and save your files locally to your PC.

dbat 0 Reputation points

2026-11-13T07:52:41.2966667+00:00

Hello, thank you so much for your response! The web browser will just continue to have this screen where none of the documents will load (I'm assuming from the outage, like you stated). I've been trying to use the Word app all day, which I was able to open, but the problem I was running into was that the document I needed was not showing up in my Word app anywhere (before the outage, I could only see and access it through the Word browser) for some reason. However, as I just went to check it again upon your response, it popped up (along with some other documents that I could only access from the browser before the outage), so hopefully it will be saved in the app now, and I can work on it through the Word app. I have it set to "AutoSave". Will that ensure that it is saved to my PC/OneDrive so that if it crashes again, all my changes are saved and I can access it? Is there anything else I can do to ensure it saves if anything continues to go wrong with the outage? Thank you so much!
DaveM121 948.5K Reputation points Independent Advisor

2026-11-13T07:57:24.91+00:00

The only advice Microsoft are providing us with at the moment is to ensure you save your files locally, not online, until they resolve this huge outage on their servers.
dbat 0 Reputation points

2026-11-13T07:59:53.18+00:00

Okay, thank you so much! I greatly appreciate your time and help!
DaveM121 948.5K Reputation points Independent Advisor

2026-11-13T08:10:52.94+00:00

Glad to help and the best of luck with your paper.
dbat 0 Reputation points

2026-11-13T08:21:54.6066667+00:00

Thank you!
DaveM121 948.5K Reputation points Independent Advisor

2026-11-13T08:26:34.79+00:00

No problem at all!.

Answer 2

Use Word for the web as the immediate workaround, and have your school or organization’s Microsoft 365 administrator submit the problem through Service health → Report an issue so Microsoft can assess it as a possible incident.

Keep working on the paper now

Open OneDrive in a browser and sign in with the account that owns or was shared the paper.
Select the document to open it in Word for the web. If necessary, select New → Word document to create a temporary document; changes are saved automatically.^1^
If the file is missing or fails only from Word’s Recent list, browse directly to its OneDrive folder—or its local folder—and open it there. This workaround does not apply if Word itself will not start or cannot edit any document.
Download a backup copy once the document opens.

Word for the web is an urgent workaround; success there does not establish that the desktop problem is part of a Microsoft 365 outage.

Report and track the possible incident

A Q&A comment does not provide the tenant diagnostics needed to register a service incident. For a school or work account, ask the Microsoft 365 administrator to:

Open Microsoft 365 admin center.
Go to Health → Service health.
Review Active issues Microsoft is working on.
If the problem is absent, select Report an issue, describe the Word symptom, and submit it. Microsoft reviews related tenant reports to determine whether a new incident or advisory is required.^2^

If an administrator is unavailable, recheck the public status page for the latest update; outage information can change quickly.^3^

Protect or recover recent work

Do not delete, move, or overwrite the original document until a recovered copy has been saved separately.

Windows: In Word, select File → Info → Manage Document → Recover Unsaved Documents. Open the newest relevant copy, then immediately choose Save As.^4^
macOS: In Finder, select Go → Go to Folder and enter:
```
  ~/Library/Containers/com.Microsoft/Data/Library/Preferences/AutoRecovery
```
Open the newest relevant AutoRecover file and save it under a new name. If Don’t Save was previously selected when closing the file, its AutoRecover copy may have been removed.^5^

If these options do not restore access, provide the Windows/macOS version, whether Word opens at all, exact error message, and whether the paper is local or stored in OneDrive/SharePoint. Those details distinguish a service incident from activation, application-startup, or file-specific failure.

References