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Microsoft’s global outage disrupted Outlook, Teams, Copilot and other Microsoft 365 services.
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Downdetector recorded approximately 130,000 US reports of Outlook problems at Thursday’s peak.
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Government agencies, airlines, financial institutions and businesses reported operational disruptions.
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Microsoft says recovery is progressing and has found no indication of a cyberattack.
November 13, (THEWILL) – Microsoft is struggling to restore its cloud-based services after a major outage disrupted email, workplace communications and business operations worldwide, leaving companies and government agencies unable to access systems they depend on for everyday work.
The disruption began on Thursday, November 12, and continued into Friday, affecting Microsoft Outlook, Teams, Copilot and several services connected to Microsoft 365.
At its peak, outage-monitoring platform Downdetector recorded approximately 130,000 reports of Outlook problems in the United States.
Reports also emerged across Europe, Asia and other regions as users encountered difficulties accessing email, loading applications and connecting to workplace systems.
Microsoft said it was making progress restoring affected infrastructure, although some initial repairs failed to work as expected.
In an update on Friday, the company reported improvements in server stability and capacity while continuing to apply fixes across its infrastructure.
Its service-health notice still classified the incident as an ongoing degradation as of 9:57 a.m. GMT, equivalent to 10:57 a.m. in Nigeria.
Microsoft has found no indication that malicious activity or a cyberattack caused the disruption.
Unlike an outage affecting a single application, the incident spread across services that organisations use together, including email, calendars, collaboration tools and applications that retrieve information from Microsoft accounts.
That dependence turned a technical failure into an operational problem for organisations across several industries.
What Went Wrong With Microsoft’s Servers?
Microsoft initially identified connectivity problems affecting Exchange Online, the cloud service behind business email accounts accessed through Outlook and related applications.
Its investigation subsequently found that some servers were failing automated health checks and becoming unavailable, placing additional pressure on the remaining infrastructure.
Engineers attempted to redistribute connections, restart affected servers and redirect traffic through alternative routes.
However, some servers stopped responding again after users reconnected, complicating efforts to restore service.
Further investigation identified a process responsible for establishing secure connections that could become overwhelmed, preventing affected servers from handling requests.
Microsoft began testing configuration changes, including adjustments to authentication and routing components, before extending successful repairs to additional infrastructure.
Although the company also investigated a recent network configuration change, it had not established a definitive root cause in its latest available incident report.
Recovery has therefore proceeded gradually rather than through a single successful restart.
Some Microsoft 365 functions remained accessible throughout the disruption.
Services requiring interaction with Exchange Online, however, experienced failures or delays, including Outlook email, certain Teams functions and Copilot features that retrieve workplace information.
Microsoft also identified problems affecting parts of its administrative, security and device-management services.
The company said it would continue monitoring restored infrastructure until normal operating capacity returned.
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Governments, Airlines and Financial Institutions Report Disruptions
The outage affected organisations whose work depends on receiving and processing information quickly.
Singapore’s Government Technology Agency reported disruption to government email services, while Japan confirmed problems affecting parts of its government technology infrastructure.
Australia’s federal police and intelligence agencies were also among the organisations affected.
Indian airlines Air India, IndiGo and Akasa Air reported difficulties with email-based customer support.
Air India and IndiGo said flight operations were unaffected, although they used alternative communication arrangements to handle customer enquiries.
Financial services experienced disruptions as well.
Reuters reported that some Taiwanese financial institutions encountered problems managing transactions, with one company resorting to fax communication to confirm trades.
European stock exchange operator Euronext reported email difficulties affecting its listing teams, while Danish shipping company Maersk warned customers about delayed communications.
American electric-truck manufacturer Workhorse Group postponed its quarterly earnings call, and Swiss luxury group Richemont briefly delayed its financial results announcement.
Microsoft’s outage also affected integrations used by OpenAI and Anthropic, whose AI services connect to Microsoft 365 tools to retrieve information and perform authorised tasks.
These incidents demonstrate how a problem originating in one cloud provider can interrupt operations across businesses that do not ordinarily appear connected.
An organisation may have functioning computers, working internet connections and employees ready to work but still struggle to process customer enquiries, confirm transactions or retrieve documents when a critical external service becomes unavailable.
Josh Gilbert, a market analyst at trading platform eToro, told Reuters that repeated Microsoft 365 outages could encourage businesses to reconsider relying so heavily on a single provider.
Microsoft experienced another Microsoft 365 disruption in January, while an Azure outage last month affected productivity applications and businesses across several industries.
Friday’s incident adds to those reliability concerns, although the financial cost of the latest disruption has not been independently established.
Microsoft says it is continuing its recovery efforts and will provide further information about the cause once the incident has been resolved.
Businesses experiencing difficulties can monitor the company’s official service-health updates while using alternative communication arrangements where their security policies permit.
For now, the interruption has demonstrated how far the consequences of a cloud-service failure can extend when email, collaboration, administration and customer operations depend on the same underlying infrastructure.
Joy Onuorah is a business journalist and brand communications specialist covering financial markets, artificial intelligence, digital economy, and the ideas reshaping business across Africa and the global market. Beyond her reporting for TheWill, Joy uses brand strategy, storytelling, copywriting, and high-value SEO to help brands build lasting market authority.