A global Microsoft outage has affected several of the technology giant’s services, leaving thousands of users unable to access their email accounts, workplace applications and cloud-based tools.
The disruption, which began on Thursday, November 12, continued into Friday, November 13, with users reporting problems accessing Outlook, Microsoft Teams, OneDrive, SharePoint and Microsoft Copilot, among other services.
Microsoft acknowledged the disruption and said users might be unable to connect to multiple Microsoft 365 services. The company attributed the problem to a large number of servers becoming unexpectedly unavailable, placing additional pressure on the remaining infrastructure.
The outage has been reported across several countries, including the US, India, Australia and Japan. Downdetector recorded more than 130,000 reports of problems with Outlook at the peak of the disruption.
Full list of Microsoft services affected by the outage
According to Microsoft’s service health advisories, the disruption extends beyond Outlook and Teams. Several applications that rely on Exchange Online, Microsoft’s cloud-based email and messaging platform, have also experienced problems.
1. Email and productivity services
- Microsoft Outlook: Users have reported difficulties accessing inboxes, sending and receiving emails, and connecting to mailboxes through desktop and web applications.
- Exchange Online: Microsoft’s cloud-based email service has experienced connectivity problems across multiple access methods, including Outlook on the web, desktop connections, Exchange ActiveSync and REST API.
- Microsoft 365: Users have faced problems accessing recently used files and certain workplace applications.
- Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint: Users reported problems accessing these applications as part of the wider Microsoft 365 disruption. Not all their functions were necessarily affected.
2. Communication and collaboration platforms
- Microsoft Teams: Users reported problems with chats, conversations, calendar functions, meeting scheduling, invitations and certain collaboration features. Some core functions, including joining calls and meetings, remained operational.
- SharePoint Online: Features dependent on Exchange Online were affected, although direct access to files stored on SharePoint remained functional.
- Microsoft OneDrive: Users reported problems accessing Microsoft’s cloud-based storage service amid the wider outage. Its impact was not separately detailed in the incident advisory.
3. Artificial intelligence services
- Microsoft Copilot: Users may be unable to load Copilot Chat or receive responses through web and desktop applications. Its ability to access workplace information, including emails, calendars and files, has also been affected.
- OpenAI Microsoft connectors: OpenAI reported problems with its Microsoft connectors, with new connections potentially failing and certain tools not functioning as expected.
- Anthropic Microsoft 365 connector: Anthropic also identified an issue with an upstream provider affecting its Microsoft 365 connector.
4. Security and enterprise management services
- Microsoft Defender XDR: Users may be unable to load certain pages and features on the security platform.
- Microsoft Defender for Office 365: Safe Links, Safe Attachments, quarantine management, threat investigation and certain email protection features have been affected.
- Microsoft Intune: Device enrolment, device check-ins and compliance policy functions have experienced intermittent disruptions.
- Microsoft Purview: Multiple services, including authorisation, automatic labelling, Data Loss Prevention (DLP), communication compliance, information protection and data classification, have been affected.
- Microsoft 365 Admin Center: Administrators may experience problems loading certain pages.
- Microsoft 365 Apps Admin Center: Cloud Update, Cloud Policy and Inventory functions have been affected.
5. Other Microsoft services
- Microsoft Planner: Users have reported reliability problems with plan and task operations.
- Microsoft To Do: The application may fail to load, with users encountering errors while performing certain operations.
- Power BI: Users may intermittently be unable to export reports carrying Microsoft Information Protection (MIP) sensitivity labels to PDF.
- Microsoft Fabric: Certain operations involving sensitivity-labelled reports and files have been affected.
- Microsoft Graph: API requests involving Exchange Online data, including emails, calendars and contacts, may time out.
- Universal Print: Users may encounter errors while submitting print jobs or accessing administrative functions.
- Windows 365: Some customers using Microsoft Purview Customer Key with their Cloud PCs may be unable to connect to their virtual computers.
- Microsoft 365 Education: Features such as Assignments, Reading Progress and Speaker Progress may be affected.
Third-party websites and services affected
The outage has also had repercussions for organisations and services that depend on Microsoft’s infrastructure. Some of the reported disruptions include:
- OpenAI: The company reported problems with Microsoft connectors, affecting new connections and the functioning of certain tools.
- Anthropic: Its Microsoft 365 connector experienced problems because of an issue with an upstream provider.
- School Bytes: The cloud-based school administration platform used by schools in Australia’s New South Wales was affected. Some schools were unable to access email services and had to ask parents to contact them by phone.
- Australian government services: Government departments and agencies reported email disruptions. Australia’s federal police and intelligence agencies were among the organisations affected.
- US House of Representatives: The institution confirmed that its users were affected and that its engineers were working with Microsoft to address the disruption.
- Australian state government services: Email services in Tasmania and Western Australia were affected. Some schools and courts in Australia also reported disruptions.
- Workhorse Group: The US electric truck manufacturer postponed its third-quarter financial results announcement from November 12 to November 16, citing business disruption caused by the Microsoft outage.
The disruption also affected day-to-day operations for some businesses. Some stores lost email-based sales, patients faced difficulties accessing telehealth services, and long-distance schools had to shut for the day.
Other services: Downdetector also recorded user reports involving Azure and the Microsoft Store. However, these reports should not be interpreted as confirmation that the entire Azure cloud platform or Microsoft Store experienced a separately confirmed service-wide outage.
What caused the Microsoft outage?
Microsoft attributed the disruption to a significant number of servers becoming unexpectedly unavailable, resulting in increased pressure on the remaining infrastructure.
The company said the affected servers were becoming unresponsive after being restored and receiving traffic. Its engineers were analysing diagnostic data to identify what was triggering the behaviour.
Microsoft also began implementing protective traffic-management measures, restricting certain types of traffic reaching affected infrastructure and rebuilding some servers using an earlier software configuration.
The company said the outage was not caused by an overall increase in internet traffic. Australia’s Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke said Microsoft did not believe it was dealing with a cyberattack, although the precise technical root cause had not been established.
When will be Microsoft outage get fixed?
Microsoft had begun restoring some services, but the recovery process remained uneven. The company said some servers that had initially been restored were becoming unresponsive again when they started receiving traffic.
It was working on restoring capacity and gradually reconnecting users to affected services. The company cautioned that users could experience a gradual recovery as their applications reconnected.
The disruption highlights how dependent businesses, government agencies and third-party technology platforms have become on Microsoft’s cloud-based infrastructure.
