The Microsoft outage that knocked out Outlook for users around the world stretched into a second day on Friday, November 13. Microsoft says email access is slowly coming back, but it has not declared a full fix, and servers it restored on Thursday night failed again once traffic returned.
The trouble began around 16:00 GMT on Thursday, November 12, which was 11 a.m. Eastern in the US. Within about an hour, Downdetector had logged reports from 74 countries and territories, Al Jazeera reported.
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What happened in the Microsoft outage
Outlook took the biggest hit in the Microsoft outage. Many users could not open their mailboxes on the web, in the app or on their phones, and plenty of emails arrived hours late. Teams and Copilot were disrupted too, although Microsoft later said Teams service health had been restored.
Microsoft first described the problem as trouble reaching Exchange Online mailboxes in the Americas, then warned that users in any region could be affected. Its list of services that might be hit also included SharePoint Online, Planner, To Do, Intune and Defender products, according to ABC7.
| Time (Thursday to Friday) | What Microsoft reported |
|---|---|
| Thu, about 11 a.m. ET | Outlook access problems begin in the Americas |
| Thu, 6 p.m. ET | A portion of servers returned and stayed stable at first |
| Thu, 8:48 p.m. ET | A server process for secure connections was overwhelmed |
| Fri, 12:55 a.m. ET | Partial recovery across regions, but not sustained |
| Fri, early morning ET | Early stabilization and capacity improvements |
What caused the Microsoft outage?
Microsoft has not published a full root cause. In its updates, it said a large number of servers became unexpectedly unavailable, which pushed their load onto the rest of its infrastructure. A process on those servers that handles secure connections then became overwhelmed, so the servers stopped answering requests.
The company stressed that overall traffic had not risen and that it saw no sign of a cyberattack. Charles Lamanna, Microsoft’s executive vice president for Copilot, Agents and Platform, said on X that there was no indication of malicious activity.
Recovery from the Microsoft outage stalled more than once. Each time Microsoft brought servers back, they could become unresponsive again as soon as traffic hit them, a cascade that analysts cited as the reason fixes kept slipping. Microsoft said it was preparing a change to address that behaviour before slowly adding traffic back, ABC News Australia reported.
Who was hit
The scale of the Microsoft outage went well beyond home users. By about 07:00 GMT on Friday, Downdetector showed at least 43,000 Outlook problem reports from 72 countries, a figure that likely undercounts the real number because most people never file a report.
Government systems in Japan and Singapore were affected, and in Australia the federal police and the country’s spy agency were among the organisations hit. The US House of Representatives was also affected, ABC News Australia reported. Some businesses lost email-based orders, telehealth patients lost access to appointments, and a few distance-learning schools closed for the day.
AI tools felt it as well. OpenAI reported issues with its Microsoft connectors, and Anthropic flagged a problem with its Microsoft 365 connector caused by an upstream provider.
Why this outage matters for business
This is not the first Microsoft 365 failure this year. A January outage took the service down across North America for almost 10 hours, and thousands of Outlook users were locked out of their mailboxes in late August. A days-long September incident was blamed on a core authentication configuration problem, as TechCrunch noted.
Each new Microsoft outage raises hard questions for companies that run email, chat and AI assistants through a single provider. Analysts quoted by Al Jazeera did not expect an immediate hit to Microsoft’s revenue, since most customers are locked into licensing contracts, but warned that the long-term effect on trust could be negative. Many IT teams may now revisit their backup email plans.
For more on tech companies under pressure this week, read our report on the Nvidia board investigation, see the AMD stock rally, or browse our latest stories.
FAQ
Is Outlook still down?
As of Friday morning, November 13, Microsoft reported gradual recovery and better server stability but had not confirmed a full fix. Check the Microsoft 365 service status page for the latest update.
Was the Microsoft outage a cyberattack?
Microsoft says it has seen no sign of malicious or cyber activity. It blames servers that became unexpectedly unavailable and overloaded the rest.
Which Microsoft services were affected?
Outlook was hit hardest. Teams and Copilot were disrupted, and Microsoft listed SharePoint Online, Planner, To Do, Intune and Defender as possibly affected.
Sources: Al Jazeera, ABC News Australia, ABC7, TechCrunch
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