Schools and universities have reported email and collaboration problems during the global Microsoft 365 outage, with potential disruption to assignments, reading practice and AI tools as recovery efforts continue.
The Microsoft 365 outage has disrupted email and other services at education institutions across several countries.
This is a developing story. Last updated: November 13, 2026, at 10:02 a.m. GMT.
Microsoft is working to restore Microsoft 365 services after a global outage disrupted email and collaboration at schools and universities. Outlook, Teams features and Copilot are among the services affected, while the company has identified potential problems with education tools including Assignments, Reading Progress and Speaker Progress.
Microsoft reports early stabilization but says capacity remains below normal, and has extended its email timeout window to 48 hours to protect delayed messages.
The company’s Exchange Online incident record lists a start time of 4:17 p.m. UTC on November 12. Microsoft is tracking the email disruption under EX1550543 and the wider Microsoft 365 incident under MO1550821, according to service notifications reproduced by the University of Pennsylvania.
The geographical reach is substantial. DW, reporting information from AP and Reuters, says Downdetector received reports from 74 countries and territories within approximately an hour. Nearly 130,000 reports of Outlook problems were recorded in the US shortly after 6 p.m. GMT on Thursday. These figures represent reports submitted to the monitoring service, rather than a verified count of everyone affected.
The disruption has also affected public administration and commercial communications. AP reports that Singapore’s government emails were down, Japan’s government experienced IT infrastructure problems, and the Philippines’ Supreme Court warned that some operations, including email responses, were affected.
Schools and universities confirm disruption
Education organizations have reported different experiences of the outage, with some services unavailable while others continue to operate. In Australia, the Northern Territory Department of Education said schools were experiencing technical issues, according to SBS News. The broadcaster also reported disruption across government agencies, courts and businesses.
In the UK, the University of Bath’s 8:30 a.m. UTC update said Outlook was inaccessible to all staff. However, it reported that basic Teams functionality appeared to be working and that authentication appeared unaffected. The notice provides an important distinction between an email outage and the availability of other tools within the same Microsoft environment.
The College of Animal Welfare has also issued an alert covering potential problems with Outlook, Teams calendars and meeting scheduling, OneDrive, SharePoint and other Microsoft 365 applications. Its notice says users could experience intermittent connectivity and performance problems, and asks them to avoid repeated sign-in attempts or duplicate IT support tickets about the known incident.
In New Zealand, the University of Auckland confirms that the global issue is affecting the institution. Its notices identify difficulties involving Outlook, Teams, OneDrive and Copilot, with subsequent information also listing SharePoint, Planner, To Do and Power BI. The disruption has extended to its Orbit travel portal, which could not accept new bookings, with urgent inquiries directed to telephone support.
Japan’s Hitotsubashi University has published a bilingual service notice warning of connection and authentication failures across Microsoft 365. Its notice identifies Outlook, Teams, Copilot and OneDrive among the services involved and asks users to wait for recovery rather than reset passwords or reinstall applications when repeated authentication prompts appear.
The University of Queensland’s notice for staff and students lists email, Teams, SharePoint, Copilot, Planner, To Do, Intune, Purview and Power BI among the affected services. However, it explicitly says examinations are continuing as scheduled, with no disruption to exams.
Microsoft’s incident notification also identifies potential effects on classroom tools. The notice reproduced by the University of Pennsylvania says Microsoft 365 Education features including Assignments, Reading Progress and Speaker Progress may be impacted. This identifies potential service disruption without establishing that every institution using those tools has experienced the same problems.
Those tools support activities beyond staff communication. Microsoft’s Reading Progress documentation describes students recording themselves reading and submitting their work through Teams. Educators can review recordings, mark reading errors and use information collected in Insights to monitor progress.
Speaker Progress supports speaking and presentation assignments. Educators can configure recording activities and feedback, while students rehearse, review their performance and submit recordings for assessment. These are the normal functions of the tools identified in Microsoft’s incident notice; the company has not provided an institution-by-institution account of their availability.
Exchange Online disruption reaches Teams, Copilot and connected AI tools
Exchange Online is Microsoft’s cloud messaging platform, supporting email, calendars, contacts and tasks. Reuters reports that Microsoft’s service notification distinguishes between features that depend on Exchange Online and elements of its products that remain functional independently.
According to CIO’s account of the incident notification, affected users may be unable to reach their mailboxes through Outlook on the web, desktop Outlook or mobile connections, while email delivery may be delayed. Teams’ core messaging and online meetings remain largely functional, but Exchange-dependent features such as calendars and meeting scheduling may fail.
The same reporting says direct access to files stored in SharePoint Online remains functional, although features depending on Exchange Online may be affected. The incident therefore involves different levels of disruption within Microsoft’s applications, rather than uniform unavailability across every product.
For Microsoft 365 Copilot, the incident notice reproduced by Penn says users may be unable to load Copilot Chat or receive responses in its web and desktop applications. Copilot experiences may also be unable to access work information such as email, calendars and files.
The effects extend to AI applications that connect to Microsoft accounts. OpenAI’s incident page lists an ongoing problem affecting its Microsoft 365 connector, warning that new connections may fail and tools may not work as expected. The record identifies ChatGPT’s Connectors/Apps component, rather than describing a complete outage of ChatGPT.
Anthropic’s status page separately attributes problems with its Microsoft 365 connector to the Microsoft incident. Its updates say mail, calendar and search tools are failing for most requests, with Claude for Outlook also affected. Earlier notices warned that new connections might not complete, mail and calendar actions could fail, and some users might be unable to open the Outlook add-in.
Some administrative and security features are affected too. CIO reports that Microsoft’s notification identifies potential problems with Defender for Office 365 Safe Links URL verification, certain Defender XDR portal pages and selected Purview functions. These are specific feature-level warnings, rather than confirmation that every capability within those products is unavailable.
Microsoft tests recovery measures as institutions issue guidance
Microsoft’s investigation has focused on servers becoming unavailable and the pressure this places on remaining infrastructure. The company says the elevated load was not initially driven by an overall increase in traffic.
Microsoft updates reproduced by the THERS Account Help Center in Japan describe a core process on affected servers becoming overwhelmed, causing the servers to stop responding and reducing available capacity. Engineers have been isolating sections of infrastructure, restarting components and gradually reintroducing traffic to test whether services remain stable.
Recovery has been complicated by servers becoming unresponsive again after traffic returns. The THERS notice records Microsoft pursuing several approaches in parallel, including analyzing diagnostic information, restricting some types of connections and rebuilding a subset of servers using an earlier software configuration.
The University of Bath’s morning update reproduces a Microsoft statement reporting improved server stability after a patch to an upstream authentication and routing configuration component was applied to part of its infrastructure. Microsoft says it is monitoring the results and expanding the change to servers supporting regions beginning their working day.
Charles Lamanna, Executive Vice President of Copilot, Agents and Platform at Microsoft, says there is no indication that malicious or cyber activity caused the disruption, according to The Wall Street Journal. Microsoft has not yet published its final post-incident root-cause report, CIO reports.
For staff and students, institutions are directing users toward local service updates and approved alternatives. The University of Queensland advises staff to save work regularly where possible, use approved alternative communication channels and avoid unapproved workarounds or installing alternative applications. Its notice also directs students to existing support services.
The College of Animal Welfare says users do not need to take action and asks them to avoid repeated sign-in attempts or duplicate support tickets about the known outage. Hitotsubashi University similarly advises against password resets and application reinstalls in response to the server-side disruption.
Auckland’s guidance suggests Teams chat or telephone calls for urgent messages where available. The university has also warned that scammers are sending fake texts and emails appearing to come from IT support or Microsoft about the outage. It tells users not to follow links or respond to unexpected messages, even when they contain a reference number.
The university says official updates should be checked through its notice pages and that it will never send a text containing a link to log in or fix an account. Its published notice says there is no confirmed time for full recovery.
Administrators can follow Microsoft’s incident records under EX1550543 and MO1550821 through their service health information, alongside the company’s public service status page. Local institutional notices continue to provide details about which services remain available to staff and students.
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