A widespread Microsoft outage disrupted Microsoft 365 services worldwide, including Outlook, Teams, and Copilot, leaving businesses, government agencies, and other organizations unable to access email and essential communication tools. More than 130,000 users reported issues on Thursday, November 12, according to the Associated Press.
Microsoft reported progress in restoring services on Friday, with improvements across North America, Europe, and Asia-Pacific. However, some users continued experiencing intermittent access problems and delayed email delivery as recovery efforts continued.
Microsoft released an update at 9:57 AM:
“We’re observing sustained improvements in service availability as recovery progresses across affected Microsoft 365 services. While service functionality continues to improve, some users may still experience intermittent connectivity issues or delayed email delivery.
Our efforts are increasingly focused on resolving the remaining issues and restoring consistent service for all affected users. We’re validating recovery across different connection methods and monitoring service stability to confirm that improvements are sustained.
At this time, we have no evidence of malicious activity associated with this incident. We will continue to treat this with urgency until full mitigation, and we will share a full Post-Incident Report with root cause and defense-in-depth actions after mitigation is complete.”
The outage also affected government operations, court proceedings, emergency communications, and business operations internationally. Microsoft stated there was no indication that the incident was caused by malicious activity and continued working to restore affected infrastructure and clear email backlogs.
Microsoft 365 services are gradually recovering, but organizations may continue experiencing email delays and intermittent connectivity issues until full restoration is achieved.
