Microsoft outage live: Outlook and Teams failures hit government agencies, schools and businesses

Government departments warn clients and stakeholders of disruptions

Several federal agencies have issued notices saying they are not receiving communications due to the outage.

The department of foreign affairs and trade published this statement on its website:

Due to the global Microsoft outage, all urgent sanctions enquiries should be directed to the Australian Sanctions Office by telephone.

The department of agriculture, fisheries and forestry issued this notice:

As of Friday 13 November 2026, there is a broad service disruption affecting DAFF messaging due to the current Microsoft D365 outage. As a result, clients may not be able to send emails to or receive emails from departmental systems.

WA government says schools are experiencing classroom disruptions

The Western Australia Government said it was aware “the Microsoft service disruption is impacting administrative email and staff collaboration tools at schoolsâ€.

A government spokesperson said:

It's important to know that classroom teaching and student learning are continuing as normal.

The department of education's IT teams are closely tracking Microsoft's restoration efforts, and they are keeping all staff advised.

There are four paper-based exams today that will not be impacted.

It is anticipated the outage may persist for some time, as efforts to fix the issue are not “taking as expectedâ€.

In an update to its website, Microsoft said:

We've monitored the status of the changes applied to improve serviceability and confirmed that change is not taking as expected.

We're identifying alternate workstreams that can be applied to increase capacity in the face of sustained traffic management imbalances.

The Victorian government has urged residents to be extra vigilant against scammers attempting to take advantage of the outage.

A government spokesperson said:

We urge Victorians to take extra caution against scammers by avoiding clicking on unexpected links they receive on their personal devices, or sharing personal details with callers claiming to be from banks or technology companies.

The government said it would continue to “monitor the situation and will work through any potential impacts as requiredâ€, and has so far reported no major issues across its departments.

Departments and agencies have made adjustments to work through the disruption, with no significant impacts reported to frontline emergency response, clinical care, public transport or VCE examinations.

Some hospitals having clerical issues but no impact on patient care, AMA says

The Australian Medical Association (AMA) says it has received reports that some hospitals and health clinics are experiencing clerical issues, but there have been no impacts to patient care.

AMA president Dr Michael Bonning said:

We've had some facilities return to using paper for scripts because authentication to get into lots of prescribing software requires multifactor verification, which requires you to be able to access your Microsoft-supported email.

We don't use any of these things for direct patient care. It's always the authorisation in systems, so we've always got workarounds for that.

GPs say they're experiencing admin issues but patient care not affected

The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners (RACGP) said some of its services had been disrupted by the outage, but patient safety had not been compromised.

A spokesperson for the RACGP said:

“We have no incoming or outgoing emails. Yes, it is affecting our admin and backend systems, but it is not affecting patient care.

“Remote retrieval work in the Top End of the NT does not appear to be significantly affected.â€

The ACT government says it is responding to the outage:

Digital Canberra is working with directorates to identify affected systems and apply mitigations where possible. Some government services may be impacted.

Precautionary measures will be taken for individual services where necessary and directorates will be initiating business continuity options to maintain services.

Microsoft narrows down cause of outage

In the latest update on the Microsoft 365 outage, the company said it has found that the process on servers affected that is responsible for establishing a secure connection becomes overwhelmed, causing those servers to stop processing requests.

The company said it was preparing a configuration change to address this, and will test it out on a subset of servers before applying more broadly, along with restarting those servers.

A recent configuration change is also being rolled back. It was this change that correlated with the start of the outage, and Microsoft is watching to see if this contributes to the recovery effort.

Service NSW asks customers not to visit its centres

Service NSW, the one-stop-shop agency for residents, drivers and business owners to access government services in NSW, has encouraged customers to delay their visits to its service centres.

A spokesperson told AAP:

Some transactions in Service Centres and Call Centres are unavailable at this time.

Customers are encouraged to delay their visit to a Service Centre and to complete transactions online, where possible.

The agency said a priority call-back system is in place for those unable to complete urgent transactions during the outage.

Employees in the Northern Territory government also said their services were down in their department, AAP has confirmed.

On social media, people are sharing how the outage has impacted their work day.

On Reddit, some users are reporting that while Outlook emails are down they can still access Microsoft's workplace messaging platform, Teams.

“They could have taken Teams out with them so I'd be able to … just sit here and do absolutely nothing,†one Reddit user wrote.

On LinkedIn, many are posting about what an email-free day looks like.

“It's all SMS and phone calls today… looks like we will have to talk to people while Microsoft sort out their email issues!†wrote Brisbane-based Tom Freer.

Government agencies contacted by Guardian Australia for comment said they themselves were having trouble responding to media queries as their own email inboxes were down. One agency said they'd been relayed an email via text.

Microsoft emails most affected in outage

The latest update from Microsoft reveals most of the services experiencing the outage now are those that connect to Microsoft Exchange – the service used for emails.

Currently users still may not be able to access their inbox using Outlook.

Notably, Microsoft now says Team chats and online meetings “remain largely functional†but meeting scheduling, and creating chats might be an issue due to the Exchange issue.