Outlook email is down

Question

Outlook email is down

David Frayer 0

What is up with Microsoft Outlook? It has been down at my place of work all afternoon and the work place computer folks are at corporate head-quarters and only communicate via e-mail which we cannot see since e-mail is down. We had no issues with our work e-mail system until the workplace switched over to Microsoft Outlook.

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2 answers

Your answer

Answer 1

Hi David

Thank you for reaching out.

Based on my research, Microsoft has officially posted an active service degradation advisory in the Microsoft 365 admin center regarding this outage (tracked under incident ID MO1550821). They are currently investigating a widespread service degradation preventing users from connecting to multiple Microsoft 365 services, including Exchange Online and Outlook on the web.
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Currently, Microsoft is actively investigating the issue on their end, so there is no action needed from end users at this time.

In the meantime, please ask your IT administrator to monitor MO1550821 under Health > Service health for further updates. Having them use the "Report a problem" feature will also help Microsoft log the impact on your organization's tenant.

In case you do not know who your IT admin is, kindly refer to this article: How do I find my Microsoft 365 admin? - Microsoft Support

I hope the information I shared earlier was somewhat helpful in addressing your issue. Hope they deploy a fix soon.

Answer 2

As of November 12, 2026, Microsoft reports an active Microsoft 365 service degradation that can prevent Business and Enterprise users from connecting to services, so your workplace outage is likely part of that broader incident rather than a problem with an individual computer.^1^

What to do now

Monitor Microsoft’s public status page: ^1^
This does not require access to workplace email.
Contact your IT staff by phone, text, or another approved channel. Ask a Microsoft 365 administrator to check your organization’s tenant-specific status:
1. Sign in to the Microsoft 365 admin center.
2. Open Health > Service health.
3. Check Exchange Online and Active issues Microsoft is working on. The incident details show the affected services, user impact, status, and Microsoft’s updates.^2^
If administrators cannot reach the admin center, they should use the same public status page above. Microsoft specifically documents that page as the fallback when admin-center sign-in is unavailable.^2^

A Microsoft-side incident normally does not require employees to reinstall Outlook, reset passwords, or change account settings. Administrators should first confirm that your organization is included in the Exchange Online incident and follow Microsoft’s recovery updates. When Exchange Online is marked degraded, Microsoft states that mail may be delayed and its engineers are already working to restore service.^3^

If Microsoft later marks the service restored but your entire workplace still cannot connect, your administrator should use Service health > Report an issue or open a Microsoft 365 support request. Individual Outlook troubleshooting is appropriate only if the broader service is healthy and the problem remains limited to one or a few computers.

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