In Summary: Microsoft says parts of its infrastructure experienced elevated server loads, while initial recovery attempts failed to fully restore services. The company has ruled out indications of a cyberattack, but has yet to provide a firm timeline for complete recovery.
Washington, US — Technology giant Microsoft is struggling to restore several of its services following a global outage that disrupted access to email, workplace communication and other Microsoft 365 applications across multiple countries.
The disruption, which began on Thursday, November 12, affected Outlook, Microsoft Teams, Copilot, SharePoint, OneDrive and other services that depend on Microsoft’s Exchange Online email infrastructure. Thousands of users reported difficulties accessing their email accounts, sending and receiving messages, loading inboxes and connecting to workplace collaboration tools.
The outage spread across regions, with reports recorded in 74 countries and territories within approximately an hour of the disruption, according to outage-tracking reports cited by international media.
Microsoft acknowledged the problem, initially attributing the connectivity difficulties to elevated loads affecting parts of its infrastructure.
In subsequent updates, the company said attempts to improve service availability were not progressing as expected, forcing engineers to explore alternative ways of restoring capacity and stabilising affected systems. “We’ve monitored the status of the changes applied to improve serviceability and confirmed that change is not taking as expected,” Microsoft said in a service update.
Businesses, government agencies affected
The outage disrupted organisations that rely on Microsoft’s cloud-based services for communication, administration and daily operations.
Government agencies in countries including Australia, Japan, India and Singapore reported interruptions to email and other information technology systems.
Airlines also experienced disruptions to email-based customer support, although Air India and IndiGo said their flight operations were not affected.
The incident also affected some services operated by technology companies that depend on Microsoft 365 infrastructure. OpenAI and Anthropic reported problems with certain tools connected to the affected services.
The scale of the disruption was reflected in reports received by Downdetector, an online platform that tracks service interruptions through user submissions.
Reports of Outlook problems in the United States exceeded 130,000 at the peak of the disruption, highlighting the widespread difficulties experienced by users.
Microsoft rules out cyberattack
Microsoft has indicated that there is no evidence the disruption resulted from a cyberattack or malicious activity. Instead, the company has pointed to infrastructure-related problems, including elevated server loads and difficulties restoring affected systems.
According to updates reported by international media, some servers became unresponsive again after being restarted and exposed to returning traffic, complicating efforts to bring services back online.
Microsoft has been working to increase server capacity, manage traffic and identify alternative recovery measures.
Although some improvements have been reported, the company has not provided a definitive timeline for the full restoration of all affected services.
The outage has renewed concerns about the dependence of businesses, public institutions and individuals on a small number of major cloud-service providers, whose infrastructure supports communication and other essential digital operations.
Microsoft’s recovery efforts remain ongoing, with users advised to follow official service updates as the company works to restore normal operations.
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