Microsoft is battling to restore its services following a major global outage that has disrupted access to Outlook, Microsoft Teams and other Microsoft 365 applications, leaving businesses and users experiencing connectivity issues.
The disruption, which began on Thursday, November 12, spread across 74 countries and territories within approximately an hour, according to outage-tracking platform Downdetector.
Microsoft has acknowledged that its efforts to resolve the problem have not gone according to plan, with its latest attempts to improve service availability failing to deliver the expected results.
In an update, the technology giant said it was identifying alternative solutions to increase capacity amid ongoing traffic management imbalances.
The company initially attributed the disruption to elevated loads across multiple regions, which it said were contributing to connectivity errors. It later identified a number of unexpectedly unavailable servers as a factor behind the increased pressure on its remaining infrastructure.
The outage has primarily affected Exchange Online, Microsoft’s cloud-based email service that powers Outlook, with users reporting difficulties accessing their inboxes, sending and receiving emails and using other connected services.
Microsoft Teams, SharePoint Online and its artificial intelligence assistant Copilot have also experienced disruptions, although the impact varies depending on the features users are trying to access.
According to Reuters, Downdetector recorded more than 130,000 reports of Outlook problems in the United States at the height of the disruption on Thursday.
The outage has also affected businesses and government agencies that rely on Microsoft’s platforms for daily operations. OpenAI and Anthropic have separately reported issues with their Microsoft 365 connectors, which allow their AI tools to access information from users’ Microsoft accounts.
Microsoft has been working to restart affected servers, redirect traffic and introduce measures to stabilise its infrastructure. However, some servers reportedly became unresponsive again after traffic was restored.
The company has not yet provided a definitive timeline for the full restoration of services.
South African users have also reported difficulties accessing Microsoft 365 services, with local Downdetector reports showing increased complaints about Outlook, Teams and other applications on Friday morning.
