Microsoft down?

Microsoft is experiencing an active Microsoft 365 email service degradation as of November 13, 2026, but no confirmed time for 100% restoration has been published; recovery may be gradual, so monitor the public service-health page for the next update.^1^

The incident reporting is clearest for work or school accounts hosted by Microsoft 365/Exchange Online. Personal Outlook.com and Hotmail accounts may exhibit similar symptoms, but an individual mailbox problem is also possible.

What to do now

1. Check Microsoft’s public service-health page.
   If it still reports an Outlook or Exchange incident, wait for Microsoft to mark the incident resolved. Reinstalling Outlook or repeatedly removing the account will not repair a server-side outage.
2. Test through the Outlook.com website rather than only the desktop or mobile app.
   • If webmail also cannot send or receive, the problem is service-side or mailbox-side.
   • If webmail works, the issue is limited to the app or its synchronization.
3. After Microsoft reports recovery, send a plain-text test message with no attachment from another email account and reply to it. This confirms both inbound and outbound delivery.

If it remains broken after service recovery

For a personal Outlook.com or Hotmail account:

• Open Settings → General → Storage. A full Microsoft cloud mailbox cannot send or receive mail; messages sent while storage was full are bounced and cannot later be recovered.^2^
• Check Other, Junk Email, and Deleted Items.
• Select Filter → Sort → Date.
• Open Settings → Mail → Rules and disable unexpected rules.
• Open Settings → Mail → Forwarding and verify that mail is not being redirected.
• Check the Outbox for a stuck message and note any non-delivery report or error code.

If those checks do not restore delivery, select Help in Outlook.com, search for “cannot send or receive email,” then scroll to Still need help? → Yes to contact Outlook.com support.^2^

For a work or school account, contact the organization’s Microsoft 365 administrator. The administrator can review the tenant-specific service incident and message trace information that is not available through the public status page.

References

1. Microsoft service health status
2. Can't send or receive email in Outlook.com | Microsoft Support