Microsoft reports sustained service recovery and extended monitoring
The company is monitoring the email backlog before considering the incident resolved. Its status remains service degradation.
Update 14.11.2026 · 01:26, Athens time — What changed
In its latest official update, published at 00:00 Athens time on Saturday, November 14, Microsoft said it continued to observe sustained service recovery across the environments previously affected. Because of the severity of the incident, it was extending monitoring to determine whether further mitigation was needed.
The company was also monitoring the backlog of email messages to ensure they were processed successfully before considering the issue resolved. Microsoft said it believed most affected scenarios involving dependent and related Microsoft 365 products had been addressed.
The official status remained service degradation. Its next update was due by 04:30 Athens time on Saturday, equivalent to 02:30 UTC. This is a communication deadline, not an announced time for full restoration.
Update 13.11.2026 · 23:34, Athens time — What changed
In its latest official update, published at 22:02 Athens time on Friday, November 13, Microsoft said its infrastructure was stabilizing while teams continued to drain queued messages and rebalance traffic. Customers may see improved sign-in and access while message delivery and processing continue to catch up.
The company said service access could recover before mail flow fully normalizes. It gave no estimated time for full recovery and continued to list the incident as a service degradation. Its next update is due by 02:00 Athens time on Saturday, November 14. That is a communication deadline, not a promised restoration time.
Update 13.11.2026 · 21:19, Athens time — What changed
In its official update authored at 19:57 Athens time on 13 November, Microsoft attributes the incident to an issue during an earlier network-capacity upgrade that surfaced following a recent network change. This is the company’s latest explanation of the cause of the disruption.
Microsoft says it has addressed the underlying issue and is seeing broad recovery and stability across its services. However, it continues to restore service to the remaining affected customers and regions. The public status remains Service degradation, without an announcement of full restoration for everyone.
The company describes the incident as technical and says it was not related to cyber or AI/agents. It promises a full post-incident report once its review is complete. The next update is due by 22:00 Athens time; this is a communication time, rather than a deadline for completing restoration.
Update 13.11.2026 · 19:40, Athens time — What changed
Hellenic Train announced on 13 November that the Microsoft service interruption has temporarily affected automatic ticket emails exclusively to Microsoft email addresses, such as Outlook and Hotmail. According to the company, passengers using other email providers continue to receive their confirmations normally.
For passengers affected by this problem, the company gives two ways to retrieve a ticket: search for and print it at a Hellenic Train ticket office, or retrieve it through staff on the train. The unique booking code is required. It appears when the purchase is completed, before the confirmation email is sent. Hellenic Train says the affected passengers can therefore make their journey.
Update 13.11.2026 · 18:22, Athens time — What changed
The Hellenic Competition Commission announced on 13 November that its Protocol Office’s electronic service is affected by the Microsoft 365 malfunction. The notice dates the Microsoft service disruption from 20:00 on 12 November. Incoming and outgoing email, as well as registration of requests and documents submitted by email, may be delayed.
For urgent matters or confirmation that a document has been received, the authority asks people to call 210 8809100 during public service hours. It announces neither a specific restoration time nor an extension of deadlines.
In its official post authored at 17:56 Athens time, Microsoft continues to report service degradation and says it is addressing residual impact. The next update is due by 20:00. This is a communication time, without confirmation of full restoration.
Update 13.11.2026 · 16:12, Athens time — What changed
In its official update authored at 16:00 Athens time on 13 November, Microsoft says email queues have been significantly reduced and are approaching normal levels. The company reports continuing improvements in the availability of Microsoft 365 services.
Recovery remains in progress: some users may still experience intermittent access issues or delayed email delivery. Microsoft says it has implemented additional mitigation measures and is restoring the remaining affected infrastructure while investigating residual service issues.
The official status remains service degradation. The company is monitoring stability and validating recovery across affected connection methods. The next update is due by 17:00 Athens time; this is a time for further communication, rather than a deadline for full restoration.
Update 13.11.2026 · 15:18, Athens time — What changed
In its new official update authored at 14:58 Athens time on 13 November, Microsoft reports broader improvements in North America and sustained progress across much of Europe. It also describes encouraging recovery signals in Asia Pacific. This is the company’s assessment of affected infrastructure, rather than an announcement of full restoration.
Some users may still experience intermittent access issues or delayed email delivery while mitigation continues across the remaining affected areas. Microsoft says it is stabilising infrastructure that has recovered, checking service consistency across different connection methods and working to reduce queues of delayed messages.
The official status remains service degradation. The next update is due by 16:00 Athens time; this is a deadline for further communication, rather than a full-restoration time. The announcement does not separately confirm the position of all users in Greece.
Update 13.11.2026 · 14:15, Athens time — What changed
In its official update authored at 14:00 Athens time on 13 November, Microsoft reports encouraging recovery progress in Europe. Service availability and email-delivery performance are improving across a growing portion of affected Microsoft 365 infrastructure, the company says. It does not announce full restoration for all users or every European country.
The company describes Japan as comparatively more stable and also reports improvement in North America. Some users continue to experience intermittent issues while recovery actions continue in the remaining affected areas.
Reducing email queues and backlogs remains a priority. The 48-hour email timeout window remains in place to help preserve delayed messages, without guaranteeing delivery. The status remains service degradation, with the next update due by 15:00 Athens time; this is a communication deadline, rather than a restoration deadline.
Update 13.11.2026 · 13:16, Athens time — What changed
In its official update authored at 13:04 Athens time on 13 November, Microsoft says recovery actions have been completed across portions of the affected infrastructure in the Asia-Pacific region. Traffic is being restored gradually, with improvements in mailbox access and delayed-email processing. This concerns part of the infrastructure and does not confirm full recovery for everyone.
Some users continue to experience intermittent issues, Microsoft says. The company is now focusing on extending recovery actions across affected infrastructure in other regions, alongside stabilisation and additional capacity.
Reducing email queues and backlogs remains a priority. The 48-hour email timeout window remains in place to help preserve delayed messages, without guaranteeing delivery. The status remains service degradation, with the next update due by 14:00 Athens time; this is a communication deadline, rather than a restoration deadline.
Update 13.11.2026 · 12:39, Athens time — What changed
In its official update authored at 12:01 Athens time on 13 November, Microsoft reports incremental improvement in several workloads, based on its telemetry and customer reports. Recovery actions are proceeding in phases, but service health remains variable and capacity has not fully returned to baseline.
The company is continuing network and traffic-management measures while prioritising queues and backlogs. It says it has extended the email timeout window to 48 hours to preserve delayed messages. This is neither a delivery guarantee nor an estimate that the overall outage will last 48 hours.
In its latest impact list, Microsoft highlights possible delays or failures in Defender for Office 365 experiences that rely on Purview information-protection and data-loss-prevention signals, including policy evaluation and related governance enforcement actions. This describes affected functionality; it does not by itself establish a new cyberattack or data breach.
The official status remains service degradation. The next update is due by 13:00 Athens time; this is a communication deadline, rather than a time for full restoration.
Update 13.11.2026 · 11:10, Athens time — What changed
Immigration New Zealand announced on 13 November that it has paused processing all visa applications until further notice because of the Microsoft outage. Applications through enhanced Immigration Online are temporarily unavailable. Requests for a New Zealand Electronic Travel Authority (NZeTA) continue normally.
The announcement also defers platform changes and features supporting visa procedures from 16 to 23 November. That date concerns these specific changes; it does not establish when visa-application processing as a whole will resume.
Update 13.11.2026 · 10:08, Athens time — What changed
In its official update authored at 09:29 Athens time on 13 November, Microsoft reports positive results for server stability after applying a patch to an upstream authentication and routing configuration component on part of its infrastructure. This is a further technical sign of progress, rather than an announcement of full recovery for users.
The company continues to monitor the mitigation’s progress and is working to expand it to additional servers. The earlier workaround guidance for the Power Apps and Field Service mobile apps remains in the official update.
For SharePoint Online, the latest update includes possible problems for some users sharing files with people outside their organisation, where both organisation-level and site-level settings permit external sharing. Microsoft states that access to files stored directly in SharePoint Online remains functional. This notice does not establish a new start time or geographical expansion of the problem.
The incident is still classified as service degradation. The next announcement is due by 10:30 Athens time; this is a communication deadline, rather than an estimate of when full restoration will be achieved.
Update 13.11.2026 · 09:14, Athens time — What changed
In its official update authored at 08:57 Athens time on 13 November, Microsoft reports marginal success as it checks whether patches have been applied and are working after infrastructure reboots. It is also expanding capacity through virtual machines. This assessment concerns technical mitigation work and does not confirm general recovery for users.
The company’s latest impact list includes intermittent sign-in problems in the Power Apps and Field Service mobile apps. Their addition to the list does not establish when these problems began or demonstrate a new geographical expansion of the incident.
Microsoft says affected users may be able to bypass the problem through the web versions of the two apps. Users who are already signed in may potentially avoid impact by staying signed in and avoiding app-data clearing or reinstallation while the incident continues. These are possible workarounds, rather than guaranteed fixes.
The official status remains service degradation. The next update is due by 09:30 Athens time; this communication deadline is not an estimate of when full restoration will be achieved.
Update 13.11.2026 · 08:20, Athens time — What changed
In its official update authored at 08:17 Athens time on 13 November, Microsoft says it is not aware of malicious activity causing the incident. This is the company’s current assessment, rather than a definitive exclusion of such a cause. The service remains in a state of degradation.
The company is evaluating traffic controls to increase frontend server capacity and stability. Options under assessment include traffic throttling, protocol adjustments and failover routing. In parallel, it is expanding internal testing in a contained environment to improve monitoring and issue detection. It does not confirm that these options have already restored service.
Microsoft says it will publish a report on the underlying cause and corrective actions after the incident is mitigated. Its next update is due by 09:00 Athens time; this is a communication deadline, not a restoration estimate.
Update 13.11.2026 · 07:11, Athens time — What changed
In its official update authored at 06:57 Athens time on 13 November, Microsoft continues to report service degradation. It describes increased calls from routing services to backend servers while traffic-rebalancing measures continue. The company is still investigating the cause of that increase.
The company is scaling up virtual machines to increase capacity and reduce load. It is also attempting to force synchronization of a recent network change on unhealthy machines, but their condition is preventing the change from syncing as expected. It does not announce that these measures have resolved the incident.
The impact covers functions that interact with Exchange Online and email services. Microsoft says most core Teams functions, including calls, meetings and group chats, are not affected, while calendar and scheduling functions may fail. The next update is due by 08:00 Athens time; this is an update deadline, not a restoration estimate.
Update 13.11.2026 · 03:09, Athens time — What changed
At 02:06 Athens time on 13 November, Microsoft said servers returned to service could become unresponsive again once they received traffic. The company is analysing diagnostic data to identify what triggers this behaviour.
It is temporarily limiting the types of traffic reaching affected infrastructure in some locations. It is also rebuilding a subset of affected servers with a previous configuration to test whether this prevents the problem. This is a test rather than confirmation of full restoration.
At 03:01, Microsoft announced a revised list of affected services and features, referring users to update MO1550821 and its public status page. The post does not specify the list changes or announce full restoration or a completion time.
Update 13.11.2026 · 01:16, Athens time — What changed
At 01:04 Athens time on 13 November, Microsoft said it was returning a portion of affected servers to service and that they remained stable so far. The company reported limited recovery.
It is also routing traffic along alternative paths where possible and has streamlined the return of the remaining affected servers. Microsoft says users may experience gradual recovery as their applications reconnect.
The update reports progress after the 00:09 announcement that earlier actions had not provided the expected relief. It does not confirm full restoration for all users or give a specific completion time.
Update 13.11.2026 · 00:19, Athens time — What changed
At 00:09 Athens time on 13 November, Microsoft said its actions so far had not provided the anticipated relief. It reported that a core process on affected servers was becoming overwhelmed, causing capacity loss.
The company is isolating part of the infrastructure, restarting affected components and reintroducing traffic to test stability before applying the change more broadly.
The update does not confirm full restoration. At 23:00 on 12 November, Microsoft had reported that some servers had returned to service, which did not establish that the overall incident was resolved.
Update 12.11.2026 · 23:19, Athens time — What changed
At 23:00 Athens time, Microsoft said it had validated an alternative method of checking server health. That method allowed a subset of affected servers to return to service, according to the official update.
The company is now applying the change more broadly. It is also preparing automated recovery systems to detect and restart unresponsive servers, seeking to maintain stability as the mitigation progresses.
The official public posts checked at 23:16 did not announce full service restoration or a specific completion time. The return of some servers represents progress in addressing the incident and does not establish that access has been restored for every user.
Update 12.11.2026 · 22:10, Athens time — What changed
At 21:31 Athens time, Microsoft said the elevated infrastructure load was not caused by increased traffic, but by servers becoming unexpectedly unavailable. That was placing strain on the infrastructure still operating, according to the company.
In its latest official post, at 21:50, Microsoft said it was testing a configuration change to address a problem causing servers to fail automated health checks. It had also started restarting all affected servers and was monitoring their return to service.
At 21:12, the company had already announced a pause on deployments and the movement of additional traffic away from affected infrastructure. The official public posts checked at 22:08 did not announce full restoration or a specific completion time.
Previous publication 12.11.2026 · 21:13
Microsoft is investigating problems accessing Exchange Online mailboxes on Thursday, November 12. Its first public update, at 19:54 Athens time, concerned users in the Americas. At 20:07, the company said the issue may affect Microsoft 365 service connectivity for users in any region.
At 20:35, Microsoft reported elevated load in part of its infrastructure across multiple regions, which it said was likely contributing to connection errors. In its latest update, at 20:48, it said it had begun redistributing connection traffic across its worldwide infrastructure to balance the load.
The official public posts checked at 21:10 Athens time did not include an announcement of full restoration or a specific completion time. Microsoft directs users to its status updates and administrators to the Microsoft 365 admin center.
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