# Why is Microsoft’s outage lasting so long and will emails be lost?

- URL: https://talkfuse.com/story/why-is-microsofts-outage-lasting-so-long-and-will-emails-be-lost/
- Published: 2026-11-13T17:12:46+00:00
- Updated: 2026-11-13T17:22:28+00:00
- Original publisher: BBC Technology (publisher lean: Centre)
- Original article: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cwvg238zrnm5o?at_medium=RSS&at_campaign=rss
- Topics: Technology

## Key points

- Microsoft 365 services were disrupted worldwide for more than 20 hours.
- Microsoft linked the outage to elevated load after a network capacity upgrade.
- Email delivery is recovering, but delays and intermittent access may continue.

## Summary

A technical problem at Microsoft caused a global outage affecting Microsoft 365 services, including Outlook, Teams and Copilot, disrupting schools, healthcare services, businesses, courts and governments. The incident matters because email and other Microsoft services support essential work and everyday tasks, and recovery has taken more than 20 hours.

Microsoft said the fault followed a network capacity upgrade and led to elevated load on its infrastructure; it said the outage was not a cyber-security incident and apologised. By Friday, services were improving, email queues had fallen towards normal levels, and Microsoft extended Outlook’s email timeout window to 48 hours to protect delayed messages. Some users may still face intermittent access or delayed delivery, and received emails may show their delivery time rather than when they were sent.

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Summarised by TalkFuse (https://talkfuse.com/). Quote the original publisher for the reporting and link this page for the summary and discussion.