Science & Tech

23 best reactions to Microsoft global outage impacting Outlook and Teams for millions of users

Microsoft is experiencing a major outage affecting its Teams, Outlook and AI software Copilot services, impacting millions of users globally.

The outage, which has been reported in more than 70 countries, first began on Thursday (November 12) according to monitoring website Downdetector.

As for those impacted, 430 million people use Microsoft 365 apps - which includes both Outlook and Teams.

In the meantime, Microsoft has provided an update on the ongoing situation, saying the changes meant to improve its services and fix the outage are "not taking as expected,"

In this photo illustration, an error message is shown when trying to access Microsoft's Outlook on November 12, 2026 in Chicago, Illinois. Microsoft reported a widespread outage today that left users unable to access Outlook, Teams and other Microsoft services. Microsoft services are down in a number of countries / Photo Illustration by Scott Olson/Getty Images

The company noted services, which have restarted, can become unresponsive again if traffic overloads their systems.

Microsoft has also indicated a cyber-attack is unlikely to be the source of the outage.

Internet reacts to Microsoft outage

There are lot of people with some spare time as a result of this outage and so those impacted have been taking to social media to do what they do best in a crisis... Post a lot of funny reaction memes.

Here are some of the best ones:

One person said, "OUTLOOK IS DOWN OUTLOOK IS DOWN."

"Whoever is troubleshooting and working on the Microsoft outage for Outlook and Teams... Take your time," a second person wrote.

A third person added, "Microsoft Outlook down in the middle of the work day."

"Outlook down immediately after getting back from lunch break," a fourth person commented.

A fifth person reacted: "Outlook down in the middle of the work day."

"I hope they sacrificed Outlook to save ao3."

"Me at work pretending to be stressed because Outlook went down."

"Millennials be like 'I needed this' and it's just Outlook being down."

"Microsoft Office going down is like a snow day for adults."

"When your email can't find me."

"To the Microsoft employees desperately trying to bring Outlook back online, please don't push yourselves too hard. Your health matters more than any deadline. Take a long weekend, relax and come back Monday feeling refreshed. You've worked hard enough this week and I promise those 400 unread emails aren't going anywhere."

"With Outlook down, it's time to be like Kelly Rowland and start sending emails through Excel."

"Microsoft Outlook is down and it's Friday..."

"OUTLOOK DOWN RN AT MY EMAIL JOB."

"Whoever shut down Microsoft Teams, Outlook and Calendars. May your pillow be cool at night and your turkey and dressing be amazing for Thanksgiving."

"Microsoft364"

"Microsoft Outlook IT team currently:"

"My massive pile of unread emails waiting in my Microsoft Outlook Inbox rn"

"IT department got jokes today."

"First day as a system engineer at Microsoft 😍 wish me luck!"

"Work Gmail users seeing the Microsoft Outlook outage."

"Me going on Twitter to check if Outlook is also down for everyone else."

"It’s almost Friday, so there’s really no point in Outlook coming back now. And it's November, so it's almost Christmas. No point really coming back until January if you think about it. Let's circle back then."

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