A global Microsoft outage is disrupting crime reporting and NHS prescriptions.
Police forces across the UK are unable to receive reports online and are directing the public to call 101 or 999 for urgent matters.
The disruption is also affecting other critical services, including the NHS, with potential delays to prescription processing.
The National Pharmacy Association has said there could be delays for some patients as a result of email system issues.
We're investigating reports of users experiencing issues accessing Exchange Online mailboxes through multiple connection methods in the Americas. More details can be found in the Microsoft 365 admin center under EX1550543.
— Microsoft 365 Status (@MSFT365Status) November 12, 2026
The outage began on Thursday evening and has affected Microsoft’s email, communication, and productivity tools, including Outlook and Teams.
Microsoft has said it is seeing “early signs of stabilisation,” but services have not yet been fully restored.
A spokesman for the company said: "We are seeing early signs of stabilisation, but service capacity has not yet returned to normal levels and health remains variable as traffic is carefully reintroduced."
The tech giant has said it is working urgently to resolve the disruption, which has impacted organisations globally.
A UK Government spokesman said: "We are working closely with Microsoft to assess any impact on government services, with robust contingency plans in place to minimise disruption."
Microsoft has confirmed that the outage does not appear to be the result of a cyber attack.
Charles Lamanna, executive vice-president at Microsoft, said the outages did not appear to be the result of a cyber attack.
The company has said that some of its earlier attempts to fix the issue did not work as expected.
In its latest update, Microsoft said: "Our primary mitigation path continues to focus on service stability and controlled recovery.
"As part of this effort, we are extending the email timeout window to 48 hours to help protect delayed messages while service recovery continues."
The company said a patch had shown “positive results for server stability.”
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Microsoft has said it will provide a full incident report once the issue is resolved.
The company said: "We will continue to treat this with urgency until full mitigation and we will share a full post-incident report with root cause and defence-in-depth actions after recovery is complete."
Online monitoring service Downdetector reported a spike in Microsoft Teams issues in the UK around 6.15pm on Thursday.
Users in 74 countries, including the UK, US, India, and New Zealand, have reported problems.
Microsoft services continue to experience disruption in about 60 countries, mainly across Europe and Asia.
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