Microsoft’s severe service outage on November 13 disrupted Outlook and Teams, delaying responses from Indian brokerages and hindering global financial workflows.
The disruption affected critical infrastructure for banks and governments worldwide, forcing a return to manual communication methods while Microsoft worked to restore services. For Indian market participants, the blackout brought immediate operational delays during an already volatile trading week.
On Nov 13, Microsoft’s flagship software was knocked offline in one of the company’s most serious recent disruptions. Outlook, Teams and Copilot were affected.
Trading-desk workflows were disrupted, corporate disclosures held up and email became unavailable to Japan's Ministry of Finance. Some banks in Singapore could not complete financing deals, traders reported.
It’s been a bit of a disaster and I can’t believe still not resolved
As Microsoft's systems went offline, CMC Markets traders resorted to "old-school" trading. Eugene Koh, sales trader at CMC Markets Singapore, said everyone was back on the phone, and WhatsApp chats were busier than usual.
A quick email exchange could now require a phone call, Koh said, adding several minutes to the process. That change significantly reduces communication efficiency in high-frequency trading environments.
Something that normally takes a second on email might now take a phone call and a few minutes to get through.
Trading was largely unaffected, said BNP Paribas Asset Management's Tokyo-based senior bond strategist Ryutaro Kimura, but a backlog of confirmations caused settlement problems for back offices. Desks continued to execute trades by phone and fax.
The outage also disrupted Japan's shared government IT platform, and the finance ministry said it was unable to receive emails. Volatile markets kept traders on edge during the week, amid fluctuations in AI stocks and bonds.
Outlook is the appendix of the modern financial operations world
So aside from the entire front to back infrastructure of global finance being crippled, and with Nvidia melting down and rates markets going wild this week, yeah it’s been all good.
Downdetector logged about 200,000 reports of user issues involving Microsoft services, making the disruption one of the company's most severe. Microsoft said in an update that it was "seeing positive results with our efforts to restart affected infrastructure."
Microsoft first worked to pin down the problem and evaluate possible fixes, then said it was restarting affected infrastructure. Hours into the outage, access to some flagship software hadn't been restored.
Microsoft shares were down 0.4% in extended trading. Previous Microsoft disruptions have rarely lasted more than several hours.
Outage Severity Comparison
Current Outage
13 November 2026
200,000 reports
- Affected Outlook, Teams, Copilot
- Global trading disruption
- Government IT impacted
Previous Disruptions
Historical average
Several hours
- Rarely lasted long
- Limited scope
- Faster resolution
The situation would enter the red zone if the outage lasted more than 24 hours, Goh said. The cause of the outage hasn't been identified.
- 13 NovOutage begins
Microsoft suffers severe disruption to flagship software.
- Hours laterStruggles continue
Microsoft struggles to restore access to some software.
- UpdateRestart efforts
Microsoft restarts affected infrastructure and sees positive results.
What we know
- Microsoft Outlook, Teams and Copilot were down on 13 November 2026.
- About 200,000 user issues were reported on Downdetector.
- Microsoft shares fell 0.4% in extended trading.
Still unclear
- The specific cause of the outage.
- Whether the disruption will exceed 24 hours.
