When is Microsoft Outlook expected to be back up? Latest update as some emails appear to work

Microsoft Friday morning said it was seeing "encouraging recovery progress," but that it was still sticking with its "extended" recovery window.

The Details

• By NBC Chicago Staff
• Published November 13, 2026
• Updated on
• November 13, 2026 at

UPDATE: Our latest Microsoft story can be found here. Our original story continues below.

Microsoft on Friday morning said it was seeing "encouraging recovery progress" after a major outage affected hundreds of thousands of Microsoft 365 and Outlook users across the globe.

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In an update posted at 6 a.m. CT, Microsoft said service availability and email delivery performance was improving "across a growing portion of affected Microsoft 365 infrastructure."

Microsoft said service in Europe and Japan was becoming more stable, and that service in North America was also improving.

We’re seeing encouraging recovery progress, with service availability and email delivery performance improving across a growing portion of affected Microsoft 365 infrastructure. Some users may still experience intermittent issues as recovery actions continue. We’re focused on… — Microsoft 365 Status (@MSFT365Status)

"However, some users may still experience intermittent issues as recovery actions continue," the post said.

In the NBC 5 Chicago newsroom, some emails hit Outlook inboxes around 6 a.m. Producers also reported emails being successfully sent, though they had a 30-minute lag time.

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When did the outage start?

The company said it determined the problems that started around noon Thursday were in part because a "portion of infrastructure is experiencing elevated load across multiple regions, which is likely contributing to the connectivity errors."

In a later update, the company said the elevated load was not from an increase in traffic but instead from a number of servers that "unexpectedly" became unavailable and prompted a strain on the remaining infrastructure, and that their technicians were also working to address a problem that was causing servers to become unavailable after failing automated health checks.

Friday, the company said it did not have any indication that the outage was caused by malicious activity and would treat the incident “with urgency and priority until full resolution.”

When is Microsoft Outlook expected to be back up?

Microsoft's Friday morning post said the company was "focused on addressing the remaining areas of disruption and improving service consistency across affected regions."

The company said reducing email queues and backlogs remains their priority. Microsoft added that its "extended 48-hour email timeout window remains in place to help protect delayed messages as delivery catches up."

About an hour later, Microsoft said in an update that it was "continuing to see improvements in service availability, with email queues significantly reduced and approaching normal levels," with users seeing possible intermittent or delayed email access and delivery as the recovery continues.

"We've implemented additional mitigation measures and are restoring the remaining affected infrastructure while investigating residual service issues," Microsoft said. "We're closely monitoring service health and validating recovery across affected connection methods to ensure sustained service stability."

The company was expected to post further updates to its blog here.