Microsoft is currently in the middle of a prolonged global outage disrupting core services including Outlook, Microsoft Teams, Copilot, and Microsoft 365.

 

Microsoft outage: The state of play

Microsoft is currently in the middle of a prolonged global outage disrupting core services including Outlook, Microsoft Teams, Copilot, and Microsoft 365. The disruption began around 6:00 PM GMT on Thursday, November 12, and continues to affect millions of users, businesses, and government agencies across the Americas, Europe, and the Asia-Pacific region.

Current Status & Recovery Efforts

• Gradual Restoration. Microsoft has begun bringing some servers back online, reporting positive results for server stability while warning that full recovery will be gradual.
• No Timeline for Full Fix. Earlier remediation attempts did not take as expected, and Microsoft has not provided an estimated timeline for when all services will return to normal.
• Active Server Restarts. Engineers are actively restarting and validating affected servers to clear connectivity bottlenecks.

Suspected Cause

• Server Configuration & Load. Microsoft attributed the outage (tracked under Incident ID MO1550821) to elevated infrastructure load and a configuration issue on servers responsible for processing server health and keeping Microsoft 365 running.
• Not a Cyberattack. Both Microsoft and government officials monitoring the situation have indicated the disruption stems from an internal technical or update failure rather than a cyberattack.

Global Impact

• Affected Services. Users have reported widespread connectivity failures across Outlook, Exchange Online, Teams, SharePoint Online, OneDrive, Copilot, Microsoft Defender XDR, and the Microsoft Store.
• Major Organizations Hit. According to The Guardian and BBC News, the outage has disrupted UK police forces, NHS services, schools, and government agencies in the US, Australia, and Japan, alongside major tech firms like OpenAI and Anthropic