Microsoft 365 outage takes Outlook, Teams and SharePoint down for Australian businesses
Microsoft says it has begun returning a portion of the affected servers to service and has observed limited recovery in some regions. Australia's National Cyber Security Coordinator is looking into the outage, the ABC reports.
Threat intelligence
13 Nov 2026
Lead source Microsoft, Microsoft 365 service status: Users may be unable to connect to multiple Microsoft 365 services (12 November 2026)
What Microsoft has confirmed
Microsoft's service status post says users may be unable to connect to multiple Microsoft 365 services. Its list runs from Exchange Online, Microsoft Teams and SharePoint Online to Defender XDR, Intune and Purview.
Microsoft found that a core process on the affected servers is becoming overwhelmed. Servers it has returned to service are remaining stable so far. On-Site Technology reports Microsoft opened its Exchange Online incident at 11:17 AM ET on 12 November, and that it widened at 1:26 PM ET into a Microsoft 365 service degradation.
What to do today
On-Site Technology advises checking status.cloud.microsoft before opening tickets or troubleshooting, and says there is nothing to fix on your own computers. It says that in classic Outlook with cached Exchange mode, recent mail and calendars stay readable while the mailbox cannot connect. Its other steps:
- Do not rebuild Outlook profiles or reinstall Office: a new profile can remove the offline copy staff are reading from
- Move urgent conversations to phone or text
- Be wary of calls or messages claiming to be Microsoft support that offer a fix
- Keep a short note of what stopped working and when, for any service credit claim later
Before the next outage
Put these in place now.
- A website notice, phone tree or text list staff and clients use when email and Teams are down
- A backup of mail, OneDrive and SharePoint data held outside Microsoft's cloud
- A list of systems whose two-factor codes reach a Microsoft 365 mailbox, each with a second sign-in method
- Service health in the Microsoft 365 admin centre, with status.cloud.microsoft for when the admin centre will not load
Sources
- PrimaryMicrosoft, Microsoft 365 service status: Users may be unable to connect to multiple Microsoft 365 services (12 November 2026)Retrieved 13 Nov 2026
- SecondaryABC News, Australia's cybersecurity chief looking into Microsoft outage as business and services struggle (13 November 2026)Retrieved 13 Nov 2026
- SecondaryOn-Site Technology, Microsoft 365 Outage, November 12, 2026: What Is Down and the Timeline (12 November 2026)Retrieved 13 Nov 2026
