A major worldwide disruption to Microsoft's services has left tens of thousands of users unable to access critical workplace tools, with the technology giant racing to restore connectivity across its platform. According to BBC News, the outage has affected Outlook, Teams, OneDrive and the company's artificial intelligence assistant Copilot, with incident logs showing the disruption began at 11:17 a.m. US Eastern Time on November 12. Microsoft stated it is
aggressively pursuing all pathways to reduce impactas it works to bring systems back online.
The disruption stems from connectivity failures affecting Microsoft 365, the subscription service that businesses worldwide depend on for email, instant messaging, file storage and collaborative work. Reports of problems with Outlook reached a peak of nearly 140,000 globally around 18:00 GMT on Thursday, according to monitoring website Downdetector. Downdetector reports reached nearly 20,000 per minute across five Microsoft services in 74 countries, underscoring the scale of the incident. BBC News understands there is no indication the outage resulted from a cyber-attack.
For multinational organisations, Microsoft 365 serves as essential infrastructure for maintaining communication and teamwork across geographically dispersed teams. The platform's unavailability has disrupted operations for businesses across the United States, Japan, Singapore and numerous other regions worldwide.
What caused the outage?
Microsoft attributed the disruption to multiple servers becoming unexpectedly unavailable, which placed excessive strain on its remaining infrastructure. A core process on affected servers became overwhelmed, causing servers to stop responding and reducing capacity. The company noted that failed automated server health checks may stem from a component that processes server health, and that it had not identified a recent change linked to the outage.
In a series of updates posted on X, Microsoft acknowledged the technical challenges and committed to resolution. A company spokesperson stated:
We appreciate our customers' patience while we work to restore services as soon as possible.
What is Microsoft doing to fix it?
Microsoft's recovery strategy involves isolating portions of its infrastructure, restarting affected components and gradually reintroducing traffic to restored systems. However, the company cautioned that some services which had been brought back online
can become unresponsive again, warning that customers in any geographic region could experience renewed disruptions during the recovery process.
The initial recovery actions did not produce the expected improvements, prompting the company to adopt a more methodical approach to restoring full functionality across its global infrastructure.
How has this affected other companies?
The outage has rippled beyond Microsoft's own services, impacting technology firms that rely on the company's systems. ChatGPT-maker OpenAI reported it was investigating connectivity issues affecting its integration with Microsoft's infrastructure, resulting in some of its tools malfunctioning. AI research company Anthropic has similarly experienced disruptions due to its dependence on Microsoft's systems.
Electric truck manufacturer Workhorse Group postponed its third-quarter earnings announcement from 12 November to 16 November, citing business disruptions caused by the global Microsoft outage as the reason for the delay.
Is this part of a broader pattern?
This incident follows a separate Teams connectivity problem that affected North America earlier on November 12. Although Microsoft said it had resolved that earlier issue, some users continued reporting connection difficulties. The company had also experienced an outage of its Azure cloud platform in the previous month, which disrupted its productivity tools suite and affected organisations worldwide.
The recurring nature of these incidents has raised questions about infrastructure resilience across Microsoft's global operations, particularly as the company continues to expand its AI capabilities and cloud services offerings.
What happens next?
Microsoft indicated that a further update on the restoration effort was scheduled for 10:30 a.m. Australian Eastern Daylight Time on November 13. The company has committed to providing regular status updates as recovery efforts progress, though the timeline for full restoration of all services remains uncertain.
Key Facts
- Outlook problem reports peaked at nearly 140,000 globally around 18:00 GMT on Thursday, with disruptions affecting 74 countries
- The outage began at 11:17 a.m. US Eastern Time on November 12 and was caused by multiple servers becoming unexpectedly unavailable
- Services affected include Outlook, Teams, OneDrive and Copilot, all part of the Microsoft 365 platform used by millions of businesses
- OpenAI and Anthropic reported disruptions to their services due to connectivity issues with Microsoft's infrastructure
- This represents the second major Microsoft outage in recent weeks, following an Azure cloud platform disruption in October
