The Microsoft 365 outage of 12 to 14 November hit at least 84 named organisations in 12 countries, by our tally of organisations that said, or were reported by BBC News, Reuters and WDR to have said, that it affected their email, services or operations. Health bodies were the largest group, at 26, and 60 of the 84 are in the UK.
The crowd-sourced numbers were larger. Downdetector had 140,000 people from 74 countries report issues with Outlook on Thursday evening, the BBC reported, and Reuters reported that Downdetector logged more than 7.4 million reports worldwide, peaking at nearly 20,000 a minute, more than 1,500 times normal levels.
Business Pill · Embedded Dependency
A short explainer on embedded dependency: what sits inside the systems you buy. It teaches the general idea only and does not discuss Microsoft or the outage.
The key insight: As we read our tally, the number that matters is the spread: 84 named organisations across nine sectors said one vendor’s email outage reached them, and 39 of the 84 were health, police, fire or security bodies, by our arithmetic.
We counted each organisation once if it said, or if one of seven reports said, that the outage affected its own email, services or operations: five BBC News articles and pages of 13 November, a Reuters report of 14 November and WDR’s report of 14 November. We left out organisations that said they were not affected, sector bodies speaking for their members, firms the reports did not name, international bodies and statements that only said an impact was being assessed. Each organisation sits in the country where it is based; the sectors are our classification.
The count is a floor, not a census. Most of the 84 come from the BBC’s regional reporting in England, which named trusts, councils and police forces one by one, so the UK share reflects where reporting was densest. Microsoft’s final service-health entry for incident MO1550821 gives a start of 16:20 UTC on 12 November and an end of 16:10 UTC on 13 November, a window of 23 hours 50 minutes by our arithmetic, as set out in our root-cause piece.
By country, the tally runs: UK 60, Canada 5, US 5, India 3, Australia, Singapore and Germany 2 each, and Japan, the Philippines, the Netherlands, Denmark and Switzerland 1 each. Euronext is placed in the Netherlands, where its parent is registered; that is our classification.
Named organisations that said, or were reported by BBC News, Reuters and WDR to have said, that the Microsoft outage of 12 to 14 November affected them, by sector. Our tally: each organisation counted once; those that said they were unaffected are excluded.
Health: 26 Bodies
BBC South East listed 17 NHS trusts in Surrey, Sussex and Kent that said they were affected, from Frimley Health NHS Foundation Trust to East Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust. In the north-west, BBC North West named the Northern Care Alliance, Pennine Care, Blackpool Teaching Hospitals and Morecambe Bay trusts, each reporting email problems while services continued.
NHS England said, in a statement carried on the BBC live page, that with “the global Microsoft issue inevitably having a disruptive impact for staff”, local services were enacting long-standing measures to manage IT outages, and Central North West London NHS Foundation Trust said it was experiencing significant disruption, the BBC reported. South East Coast Ambulance Service said the outage disrupted some internal systems but that “Our call triage system and our computer-aided dispatch system, which we use to deploy ambulances, are unaffected and remain fully operational”.
In Canada, Unity Health Toronto said its teams were having trouble sending or receiving email but that patient care was not affected, and SickKids reported staff having issues accessing phone calls and emails, the BBC reported.
Police, Fire and Security: 13
The Metropolitan Police, Greater Manchester Police and Police Scotland said online forms may be affected, the BBC reported; Lancashire, Cheshire and Merseyside forces posted similar notices, and Surrey Police said its emails had been hit. Kent Police and Sussex Police said their online reporting was working again. Lancashire Fire and Rescue Service said it could not access responses to its website contact forms, and Kent Fire and Rescue Service said it was affected.
In Australia, the spy agency and federal police were among organisations caught in the outage, Reuters reported. The head of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, Mike Burgess, told reporters: “The impact that they are dealing with is very much on email system”, according to the BBC.
Governments, Councils and Courts: 19
A UK parliamentary spokesperson said: “We are aware of the global issue affecting Microsoft email services, which is impacting users of the parliamentary network.” MSPs confirmed that Holyrood’s email systems were down, and the Welsh government said it was “using contingency arrangements as needed”, the BBC reported. In Washington, House of Representatives staff told Politico their work had been halted, the BBC reported.
The Japanese government said its shared IT platform had been disrupted, and Singapore confirmed the outage had affected some government systems, the BBC reported. The City of Austin posted: “Due to an ongoing Microsoft Outlook outage, City of Austin employees cannot receive or send emails at this time.” The cities of Ottawa and Vancouver urged residents to call for urgent issues. In England, seven councils from Lancashire County Council to Surrey County Council reported email problems, according to BBC regional reports.
Singapore’s courts said they were “experiencing issues with incoming and outgoing emails”, and the Supreme Court of the Philippines warned that “responses to emails and other transactions may be delayed”. At Manchester Minshull Street Crown Court, where some criminal trials were delayed, a judge told the jury: “We are learning of the dangers of relying on computers and data systems”, BBC North West reported.
Transport, Schools and Companies: 26
Via Rail said passengers might not receive emails about their trips, and Deutsche Bahn had difficulties sending out timetables for diverted trains, Reuters reported, according to the BBC. Transport for Wales, Caledonian MacBrayne and Strathclyde Partnership for Transport reported email or network issues. Gatwick Airport reported email problems but said it was running as normal, and Manchester Airport said only its corporate set-up was affected. India’s IndiGo, Akasa Air and Air India said their email support services were impacted, Reuters reported.
The Education Authority in Northern Ireland said: “Outlook is currently unavailable to NI schools and the Education Authority. Emails cannot currently be sent or received.” Queen’s University Belfast and the University of Manchester reported disruption, and the universities of Portsmouth and Aberdeen extended deadlines or waived late penalties, the BBC reported.
Among companies, Euronext reported email disruptions, Aviva activated backups for its earnings calls, Maersk warned customers of delayed updates, Workhorse Group rescheduled its results to 16 November and Richemont briefly delayed its first-half results, Reuters reported. OpenAI and Anthropic faced issues with Microsoft connectors that were later resolved, Reuters reported. Royal Mail said some online services were unavailable, and Germany’s Phantasialand told WDR the outage stopped its pool’s chlorine warning emails from arriving, as covered in our piece on the park.
Who Said They Were Not Hit
Some organisations said the outage missed their core operations. A spokesman for Liverpool John Lennon Airport said: “It’s not affecting us operationally and it’s business as usual”. The head of Germany’s BSI cybersecurity agency, Claudia Plattner, said the country’s authorities had not been affected because they did not rely on Microsoft 365 services, the BBC reported. South Western Railway said its trains were not affected. None of these is in our count.
The Structural Read
As we read the statements, the common thread was the channel rather than the core service: trusts, police forces and airports said clinical work, dispatch or flights continued while email, online forms and booking confirmations failed, according to the BBC reports.
As we read the country split, the 60 UK names reflect the BBC’s regional lists more than a UK-only failure; the 74 countries in Downdetector reports, as the BBC reported, is the wider footprint.
Luke Kehoe, lead industry analyst at Ookla, to Reuters, 14 November 2026
“It shows how much of the working day now runs through one provider’s email and collaboration tools”
Three Implications
FOR IT LEADERSMicrosoft’s record put the incident window at 23 hours 50 minutes, by our arithmetic, and named organisations in 12 countries reported impact, by our tally.
FOR PUBLIC BODIES Police forces, councils and NHS trusts in the tally pointed the public to phone lines while email and online forms were down, the BBC reported.
FOR LISTED COMPANIES Workhorse Group rescheduled its results and Richemont briefly delayed its first-half results, Reuters reported; Aviva activated backups for its earnings calls.
The framework says: “The value proposition shifts from features to integration depth.”
As we read it, the tally shows that depth from the outside: 84 named organisations, by our count, said one email and collaboration service reached into their daily operations. The framework predates the outage and does not discuss it.
What Is Not Established
How many organisations were affected in total is not known; Microsoft has not published a customer count in any source we read, and the BBC noted that Downdetector relies primarily on users self-reporting. Our tally depends on which organisations spoke and which reporters listed them, so countries with less named reporting are under-counted. Reuters cited Morningstar DBRS estimating global insured losses at between $300 million and $500 million; that is one firm’s estimate. We did not contact the organisations named here.
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By our tally, 84 named organisations in 12 countries said, or were reported to have said, that the Microsoft outage hit them, 26 of them health bodies. Downdetector logged more than 7.4 million reports, Reuters reported. Microsoft’s account of the cause is in our root-cause piece, the first day’s spread is in our 74-country report, and the wider week is in 3 Outages, 46 Hours in Two Days.
A note on sourcing. Every organisation in the tally is named in one of seven reports: five BBC News articles and pages of 13 November (around the world, UK services, North West, South East and the live page), Reuters on 14 November and WDR on 14 November; quotations are theirs or the organisations’ as they reported them. The count, the sector and country split and the exclusions are our own tally; the 23 hours 50 minutes comes from Microsoft’s final service-health entry for MO1550821 and is our arithmetic. Downdetector figures are as reported by the BBC and Reuters. We did not contact the organisations named here.
Gennaro Cuofano is a CRO and tech executive who has worked in AI since late 2015, starting with bringing NLP, natural-language generation, voice and chatbot products to the marketing industry. His background is in law and finance: he holds a Master's degree in Law and an International MBA with an emphasis on corporate finance (LUISS Business School and the University of San Diego, 2012), and worked as a financial analyst at a real-estate investment firm in San Diego and as an assistant controller. His work focuses on business model strategy, business engineering and, more broadly, structural analysis: how companies make money, read from their own filings. He created FourWeekMBA and leads research there and at The Business Engineer, his newsletter on AI and business strategy, with over 95,000 subscribers and more than 1,000 published analyses. His writing has also appeared on Entrepreneur (for example, How to Digitize a Family Business in Europe) and HackerNoon. Find him on LinkedIn and Substack. See how we source.
