New Delhi: Microsoft has apologised for a global outage that disrupted access to Teams, Outlook and its Copilot AI software for almost 24 hours, while ruling out a cyberattack as the cause. The company said the disruption resulted from a technical failure linked to an earlier network capacity upgrade, rather than malicious activity or issues involving artificial intelligence agents.
“We are deeply sorry for the disruption this incident has caused our customers and partners. We know the trust they place in our services and take that responsibility extremely seriously. We are seeing broad recovery and stability across our services,” Microsoft said in a statement on X.
We are deeply sorry for the disruption this incident has caused our customers and partners. We know the trust they place in our services and take that responsibility extremely seriously. We are seeing broad recovery and stability across our services.
This was a technical issue not related to cyber or AI / agents. The incident was introduced by an issue during an earlier network capacity upgrade that surfaced following a recent network change. We have addressed the underlying issue and continue to restore service to remaining customers and regions.
Given the scale of demand, we restored services gradually, validating stability at each stage. While this took longer, it helped ensure a stable restoration.
We will provide a full post-incident report once our review is complete.
— Microsoft (@Microsoft) November 13, 2026
However, the company said it did not have a timeline for the complete restoration of services.
‘NOT RELATED TO CYBER OR AI’
Microsoft traced the outage to an issue that emerged during an earlier network capacity upgrade and was triggered following a more recent network change.
“This was a technical issue not related to cyber or AI / agents. The incident was introduced by an issue during an earlier network capacity upgrade that surfaced following a recent network change. We have addressed the underlying issue and continue to restore service to remaining customers and regions,” it added.
The outage affected several widely used Microsoft services simultaneously, leaving users unable to access tools they rely on for work, communication and email. Earlier, the company had said it was still dealing with the “residual impact” of the failure as engineers worked to restore the affected infrastructure.
The disruption also affected customer-facing operations in India, particularly those of airlines relying on Microsoft’s email services. IndiGo said its email support had been affected and that it might not be able to receive customer emails. However, it said other customer support channels remained available.
Akasa Air also reported delays in its email support and advised passengers requiring immediate assistance to contact its 24-hour customer care centre or use its social media channels. Air India said its flight operations remained unaffected and that it had temporarily rerouted email services to ensure customer communications continued reaching the airline.
The disruption also affected financial services firms and businesses, which reported difficulties accessing research material and managing client interactions. According to outage-tracking website Downdetector, Indian users began reporting problems at around 11 pm on Thursday, with reports increasing again after 6 am on Friday.
Microsoft said it restored services in stages rather than through a single large-scale restart.
“Given the scale of demand, we restored services gradually, validating stability at each stage. While this took longer, it helped ensure a stable restoration.”
The company had initially described the situation as showing “encouraging recovery progress”, with service availability and email delivery improving across an increasing portion of the affected infrastructure.
“We know our customers rely on our services to get important work done every day, and regret the impact these outages had on those who depend on us,” Microsoft said.
The company also stressed that there was no evidence indicating a deliberate attack. At its peak, the outage generated more than 130,000 reports of Outlook problems on Downdetector, with disruptions reported across more than 70 countries.
For businesses heavily dependent on Microsoft’s cloud ecosystem, the incident meant more than losing access to a single application. Email, workplace communication and AI-assisted tools were all affected, disrupting routine operations across multiple regions.
