TLDRA Microsoft outage hit MS365, Outlook, Teams and Copilot, with problems reported in 74 countries and territories.Staff at some South Korean firms printed files, wrote reports by hand and switched to Google Gmail.Workhorse Group moved its third-quarter earnings release from Nov. 12 to Nov. 16.Microsoft blamed an overloaded core system and said there were no signs of a cyberattack.As of the afternoon of Nov. 13 in South Korea, Microsoft had not given a timeline for full recovery.Office workers at companies around the world turned to paper printouts and rival email services on Nov. 13 after a large Microsoft outage. The disruption hit MS365, Outlook and Teams. It also knocked out the AI work tool Copilot at some firms.Reports of the outage began just after noon on Nov. 12 in the U.S., which was about 2 a.m. on Nov. 13 in South Korea. Within an hour, users in 74 countries and territories were reporting problems.On the tracking site Downdetector, Outlook complaints in the U.S. briefly topped 138,000. That peak came about an hour after the first reports.A Microsoft outage that began over 12 hours ago has left millions around the world without access to Outlook email, Teams meeting tools and other staples of modern office life. Banks, governments and courts in multiple countries are affected. Here is what we know so far:… pic.twitter.com/wfPZGiguk8— CNN (@CNN) November 13, 2026Paper, Pens and GmailA major South Korean conglomerate sent an emergency notice telling staff that services were down because of the global outage. The notice said Outlook, Teams and Copilot were affected. Tools for sharing documents, working together and analyzing data were also hit.Some employees printed online files so they could review them. One worker said staff were underlining printed materials by hand. Performance reports that usually ran through Copilot had to be written manually.Meetings with overseas offices were canceled. Kim Sang-woo, 28, who works on the export team at small business SH Korea, said a Teams video call with the company’s U.S. team was scrapped. He said his team kept working through Google Gmail.An employee at a foreign consulting firm, who asked not to be named, said meetings with teams in Singapore and Hong Kong were called off. The worker said unfinished tasks would likely spill into the weekend.Global companies that rely heavily on email took the hardest hit. An official at the South Korean unit of a European drug company said work had been completely paralyzed. No instructions had come from headquarters, the official said.The impact was not the same everywhere. Some companies got Outlook or Teams back later in the afternoon. Others saw only slow email, while Teams and Copilot kept working.Governments, Earnings and AI Tools HitThe trouble reached beyond private offices. Problems were reported at the U.S. House of Representatives and the Japanese government’s shared IT platform. Australian intelligence agencies and federal police were also affected.Electric truck maker Workhorse Group pushed back its third-quarter earnings release. The company had planned to report on Nov. 12 and moved the date to Nov. 16.OpenAI and Anthropic said features that pull Microsoft emails and work files into their AI services were disrupted. These features connect the AI services to users’ Microsoft work accounts.The outage centered on Exchange Online, Microsoft’s corporate email and calendar service. Users struggled to send and receive mail and to load their inboxes.Microsoft said not all MS365 features were down. Services that do not rely on Exchange Online kept running normally, the company said.Microsoft said some servers stopped responding after a core processing system in part of its infrastructure became overloaded. It said the problem was not caused by a jump in outside traffic. The company also said it found no signs of a cyberattack.Microsoft restarted servers and rerouted access paths to restore service. As of the afternoon of Nov. 13 in South Korea, the company had not given a timeline for a full recovery.The post Microsoft Outage Sends Office Workers Back to Paper and Gmail appeared first on Blockonomi.