By Des Moines Creative
Updated November 13, 2026: Services partially restored. Microsoft’s 8:57 a.m. Central update reports continued recovery, with intermittent access issues and email delays still possible.
What was impacted by the Outlook outage?
| Service or email route | Reported impact or potential delivery effect |
|---|---|
| Outlook desktop and mobile with Microsoft-hosted mailboxes | Mailbox access and syncing could fail. |
| Outlook webmail, also called Outlook on the web | Browser access could fail; switching from the Outlook app did not guarantee access. |
| Microsoft Teams | Calendars, scheduling, invitations, and other Exchange-dependent features were disrupted. Core calls, meetings, and chats largely continued. |
| Microsoft-hosted Outlook mailbox to another Microsoft-hosted mailbox | Sending, receiving, or mailbox access could be disrupted. |
| Microsoft-hosted Outlook mailbox to Gmail | Microsoft’s sending side could delay delivery. |
| Gmail to a Microsoft-hosted Outlook mailbox | Microsoft’s receiving side could delay delivery. |
| Other providers’ webmail to a Microsoft-hosted Outlook mailbox | Delivery could be delayed when the message reached the affected Microsoft service. |
| GoDaddy Microsoft 365 email | Affected because this product uses Microsoft’s email infrastructure. |
| Gmail to Gmail | Direct delivery within Google would not ordinarily depend on the affected Microsoft email service. |
The service effects above reflect Microsoft’s incident reports and GoDaddy’s outage notice. The email routes illustrate possible delivery effects, not a failure of every message. See Microsoft’s mail flow explanation.
An email outage can bring a workday to a stop. Estimates wait, customers miss replies, and your team starts wondering whether the problem is with the office network, the website, or the company managing your technology.
The November 2026 Outlook outage originated within Microsoft’s infrastructure. Businesses using affected Microsoft email services depended on Microsoft to restore service, including customers who purchased Microsoft 365 through GoDaddy. GoDaddy’s incident report confirms the disruption.
At Des Moines Creative, we want business owners to understand where the problem occurred, what it means for customer communication, and what to check before changing a working setup.
For a business, the practical impact depends on its workflow. A delayed email might hold up an estimate, an appointment confirmation, a vendor response, or a customer approval. Staff should identify which tasks need another communication channel while delivery remains uncertain.
Could an Outlook outage affect website forms and new customer inquiries?
Yes, if a form notification or customer confirmation depends on an affected Microsoft mailbox or sending service.
A website might accept an inquiry while its email notification is delayed. Whether the inquiry is available elsewhere depends on how the form stores submissions and connects to your other systems.
If your website retains inquiry records separately from email notifications, those records may help your team identify customers still waiting for a response.
An empty inbox is not enough to conclude that no leads came in.
What support is available for website forms and email?
Confirm your website forms were received
At Des Moines Creative, we recommend checking your email for website form submissions, confirmation messages, and related records. If your business uses one of our web form content management systems, you can log in to review completed submissions and identify inquiries that still need a response.
Compare those records with the emails your team received so you can follow up with customers whose notifications may have been delayed.
Check email delivery with a message trace
If an important email is still missing, a message trace can help establish what happened during delivery. The records can show whether the email service received, deferred, rejected, or delivered a message. They do not confirm that the recipient read it.
Your email administrator or support provider can review those records to help determine which messages need further attention.
Request message trace records or email support
Des Moines Creative is not an IT company, but we offer IT-related assistance with email setup and recovery, message tracing, password changes, and general email questions.
These services are available on a monthly retainer or at an hourly rate and are typically reserved for email accounts we have set up.
We know your business depends on timely communication. If you are concerned about missed messages or gaps in communication, our team may be able to assist or direct you to an IT professional who can.
Contact Des Moines Creative to request message trace records or discuss email support.
Should I resend emails sent during the outage?
Check important messages before resending them repeatedly.
Start with the emails that carry a deadline: estimates, invoices, approvals, appointment details, or instructions a customer needs to act on. Contact the recipient by phone or another established channel when waiting could cause a problem.
If a resend is necessary, identify it clearly. A brief note explaining that you are following up after the Microsoft outage will help the recipient recognize a duplicate if the original arrives later.
Does a delayed email mean it is permanently lost?
A delay does not automatically mean a message is lost. Microsoft explains that temporary connection failures can cause messages to wait in a queue for another delivery attempt. Permanent failures can produce a bounce message. See its mail delivery explanation.
Microsoft’s incident updates also reported a 48-hour email timeout extension to preserve delayed mail. That safeguard was not a restoration deadline.
Avoid assuming every missing message will arrive automatically. Review failed-delivery notices and verify anything time-sensitive.
Were some emails still able to go out and come through?
Yes. Recovery and service availability varied across the affected infrastructure, so email did not necessarily stop for everyone at the same time. GoDaddy’s updates described improving access alongside continuing intermittent problems.
That means a successful exchange with one customer does not confirm that every other message arrived.
Consider an estimate sent during the disruption. A later email to another customer might work, while the earlier estimate still needs a delivery check. Treat important messages individually, especially when a payment, approval, or scheduling decision depends on them.
An email appearing in your Sent folder should not be your only confirmation that the recipient received and read it.
What should a business check after email service returns?
We recommend checking the work that could have stalled during the disruption:
- Review important messages sent during the outage and confirm receipt where needed.
- Check failed-delivery notices and messages still waiting in your Outbox.
- Compare available customer inquiry records with completed follow-ups.
- Test sending and receiving with an external account.
- Test the full website inquiry process, including the saved submission, staff notification, and customer confirmation where configured.
- Give your IT provider specific sender addresses, recipient addresses, timestamps, and error messages for unresolved issues.
A successful test establishes that the tested path worked at that time. It does not prove that every earlier message reached its destination.
For future outages, decide who checks provider status, who updates staff, and which alternative contact method you will use for urgent customer communication.
How long did the Outlook outage last, and when will it be fully restored?
The Exchange incident began November 12 at 10:17 a.m. Central. By Microsoft’s November 13, 8:57 a.m. Central update, services had partially recovered, but some users still faced intermittent access issues or delayed email. The incident had lasted nearly 23 hours, and Microsoft had not confirmed full restoration.
See the timestamped Microsoft incident reports and live service status for subsequent changes.
Was the Outlook outage caused by my local IT company?
No. The widespread outage involved Microsoft’s infrastructure and was outside a local IT provider’s control.
Your IT company may manage your accounts, configure devices, and help troubleshoot delivery problems. Those responsibilities do not give it control over Microsoft’s servers.
Your provider still has a useful role during an outage: identify whether your business is affected, explain the status, help your staff communicate, and investigate messages that remain missing after service recovers.
For business owners, the distinction matters. A provider can help you manage the disruption even when restoring the underlying service depends on Microsoft.
What happened to Microsoft’s email servers?
Microsoft reported that a process handling secure connections became overwhelmed and prevented affected servers from processing requests. Recovery work included configuration changes, server restarts, traffic adjustments, and reversing a recent network change.
Those findings describe the failure and recovery efforts; they do not establish a final root cause.
The GoDaddy outage report includes Microsoft’s explanation and the recovery updates shared with GoDaddy customers.
Did this only affect Outlook-to-Outlook email, or could Gmail be involved?
A message can encounter a Microsoft service problem whenever its delivery path involves the affected Microsoft infrastructure. Both the sending and receiving sides matter.
The impact summary above shows how different email routes could be affected. A working mailbox at one end does not guarantee delivery through the other provider.
Also, Outlook is an application as well as part of Microsoft’s email branding. People can use Gmail inside Outlook. Opening Outlook does not, by itself, tell you which company hosts the mailbox.
Was GoDaddy email affected?
Yes, GoDaddy’s Microsoft 365 email service was affected. Its status page listed Professional Email with Microsoft 365 as experiencing a major outage, while its separate Professional Email product and DNS remained operational.
You can review those service categories on the GoDaddy status page.
A domain registration, website hosting plan, and email subscription can involve different services. Registering your domain with GoDaddy does not automatically mean GoDaddy’s Microsoft 365 product handles your email. Check the actual mailbox service before deciding whether an incident applies to your business.
Was this an AI hack or cyberattack?
Microsoft reported no evidence of malicious activity, with its final root-cause report pending. Its incident updates do not support calling this an AI hack. Copilot being affected does not establish AI as the cause.
Did the outage involve DKIM records or my domain settings?
Microsoft’s reported infrastructure failure does not establish a problem with your company’s DKIM records.
DKIM is an email authentication method. The sending system signs parts of an email, and the receiving system uses a public key published through DNS to verify that signature. Microsoft explains the process in its DKIM documentation.
DKIM, SPF, and DMARC still matter for normal email delivery and protection against impersonation. However, changing those records is not a remedy for an outage inside Microsoft’s infrastructure.
We recommend keeping existing domain settings in place unless your provider identifies a specific configuration problem. If delivery errors continue after recovery, use the error message and delivery records to guide the next step.
Where can I find reliable resources and updates?
- Microsoft service health: Current public service status.
- Microsoft incident reports published by the University of Pennsylvania: Timestamped Microsoft updates for incidents EX1550543 and MO1550821. This rolling feed may change as incidents age.
- GoDaddy’s Microsoft 365 outage report: The incident affecting GoDaddy’s Microsoft 365 email customers.
- GoDaddy service status: Status by product.
- Microsoft mail flow documentation: Delivery queues, retries, and failed messages.
- Microsoft DKIM documentation: Email signatures and DNS configuration.
Disclaimer
Information about this incident is still developing. This article reflects provider reports available at the update time noted above. Service status, reported causes, and recovery details may change as Microsoft and other providers release additional information.
This article provides general information and is not an account-specific diagnosis or confirmation that any individual email was delivered, received, read, or recovered. Contact your email administrator or service provider for help with your account.
