Microsoft Outage Disrupts Outlook, Teams and Copilot; Over 200,000 User Reports Recorded

A widespread Microsoft service outage has disrupted access to several major platforms, including Outlook, Microsoft Teams, Copilot and SharePoint Online, with more than 200,000 user complaints reported at the peak of the disruption. Microsoft is continuing its recovery efforts after the technical issue affected users across multiple countries. The outage began on Thursday, November 12, and continued into Friday, November 13, affecting users in the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Japan and Singapore, among other regions. Thousands of individuals and businesses reported difficulties accessing their accounts, sending emails and using various Microsoft 365 applications.

According to outage-tracking platform Downdetector, reports of problems with Outlook surged to nearly 140,000 at one point on Thursday. Other Microsoft services also witnessed a sharp increase in complaints as the disruption spread across the companys cloud-based ecosystem. Microsoft initially identified elevated infrastructure load across multiple regions as a major factor behind the disruption. Further investigations revealed that several servers had unexpectedly become unavailable, placing additional pressure on the remaining infrastructure and affecting service availability.

The company said it had been working to restore affected systems by redistributing network traffic, restarting unresponsive servers and introducing alternative server health-check procedures. However, some restored servers became unresponsive again when they started receiving user traffic, making the recovery process more complicated. Outlook users reported problems signing into their accounts, loading inboxes and sending or receiving emails. Microsoft Teams also experienced disruptions, particularly in features connected to Exchange Online, including calendar functions, meeting scheduling and certain chat operations. Core messaging and online meetings remained largely functional for many users.

Microsofts AI assistant, Copilot, was also affected, with users reporting difficulties accessing Copilot Chat and receiving responses through its web and desktop applications. Some features requiring access to workplace information, such as emails, calendars and documents, were also impacted. Other services experiencing problems included Microsoft Planner, To Do, Defender and certain SharePoint Online features. Microsoft clarified that some functions that do not depend on Exchange Online continued to operate normally.

The disruption also affected organisations and third-party services relying on Microsofts infrastructure. OpenAI and Anthropic reported issues with certain Microsoft 365 integrations, while businesses and public institutions faced difficulties with their regular digital operations. Microsoft has not announced a definitive timeline for the complete restoration of all affected services. In its latest update, the company reported positive results from its recovery measures and said it was monitoring the performance of restored systems before expanding the corrective measures.

The incident has once again highlighted the dependence of businesses, educational institutions and professionals on cloud-based platforms for everyday communication and workplace collaboration. A prolonged disruption to services such as Outlook and Teams can affect business operations, delay important communications and interrupt time-sensitive work. Microsoft has apologised for the inconvenience and said its engineering teams are continuing to investigate the issue and restore affected services.

Disclaimer: This image is taken from AFP.