Global Microsoft outage disrupts school communications and digital learning
A global Microsoft 365 outage on Friday 13 November 2026 has disrupted email and connected digital services used by schools and universities, with education institutions across several countries reporting problems communicating with staff, students and families.
Microsoft says the incident has mainly affected Exchange Online, the system supporting organisational email, alongside connected functions in Teams, Copilot, SharePoint and other applications. Its service advisory also identifies education features including Assignments, Reading Progress and Speaker Progress as potentially affected. Core Teams chats and online meetings have remained largely functional, although calendars and meeting scheduling may not work normally.
In the United States, Katy Independent School District in Texas formally reported a major interruption to email and other Office applications. In Western Australia, the education department confirmed disruption to school staff email and collaboration tools, while saying teaching and scheduled paper examinations were continuing. In Japan, Waseda University's Accessibility Resource Center advised that it was unable to send, receive or review emails.
The outage is also relevant to international schools worldwide that rely on Microsoft 365 for everyday communications and teaching. Schools in Asia, including China, may experience different effects depending on which services they use and how they are hosted. EdEvents has not independently verified disruption at a named international school in mainland China.
Microsoft has reported that some affected servers became unresponsive again after traffic was restored, complicating recovery efforts. It says it is restoring services gradually and has found no indication that the incident was caused by malicious or cyber activity. The extent of disruption continues to vary between organisations.
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