Microsoft outage disrupts email, work apps as recovery efforts continue
Microsoft worked Thursday to restore Outlook and other Microsoft 365 services after unavailable servers triggered widespread connection problems.
By Derek Payne | The Weekly Press
A widespread Microsoft outage disrupted email and workplace applications Thursday, Nov. 12, leaving users unable to access inboxes, exchange messages and connect to services as the company worked into the evening to restore operations.
Outlook complaints on the outage-tracking website Downdetector climbed to nearly 130,000 shortly after 1 p.m. Eastern time. Users reported problems sending and receiving email and loading their inboxes. Complaints also affected Teams, Copilot and other Microsoft 365 services. The reports represent user submissions rather than a confirmed count of everyone affected.
Microsoft said the disruption involved servers that had unexpectedly become unavailable, shifting work onto the remaining infrastructure and contributing to connection failures. The company said the increased load reflected the loss of server capacity rather than an overall surge in traffic.
The potential impact extended beyond email. Microsoft identified Exchange Online, Teams, SharePoint Online, Microsoft 365 Copilot and Defender XDR among the services users could have trouble accessing. The company said the issue could affect customers in any region.
Engineers paused deployments and configuration changes while investigating the disruption. Recovery efforts included redirecting traffic, restarting affected servers and changing the automated checks used to determine whether servers were healthy enough to operate. Microsoft also examined recent configuration updates as possible contributors, without confirming an underlying cause. Status
By about 6 p.m. Eastern, Microsoft said some affected servers had returned to service and were remaining stable. The company reported limited recovery in some regions and said access could improve gradually as capacity returned and customers’ applications reconnected. A timetable for full restoration had not been announced in that update.
An earlier Teams disruption in North America had been resolved, Microsoft said, but the broader outage continued to affect access to its services. That distinction meant the earlier restoration announcement did not signal an end to the wider Microsoft 365 problems.
