Microsoft Outage Takes Down Outlook and Teams Worldwide

Microsoft said a technical mistake happened during a network upgrade. It was not a cyber-attack. In the UK, police asked people to phone them instead of reporting crimes online. One pharmacy could not get patient information from a hospital by email, so someone drove there to collect the papers. A pharmacy leader said it was "what we used to do 20 years ago". In the US, workers at the House of Representatives lost a whole day of work.

Microsoft said it was "deeply sorry". When its email worked again, one US police department joked that this was not the result it wanted. Some people online joked about a 1960 study that said "doomsday" would come on 13 November 2026. Experts said some workers may have enjoyed a day with no email. But they warned that we rely heavily on a few big tech companies.