Microsoft fixes Microsoft 365 outage after 24-hour disruption in 74 countries

Microsoft has restored its Microsoft 365 services after a global outage lasting over 24 hours that affected users in at least 74 countries, disrupting Outlook, Teams, and Copilot. The company attributed the incident to a network upgrade issue and apologized for the inconvenience. The outage began on November 12, with Microsoft acknowledging the problem at 5:54 pm GMT. The company traced the cause to an issue introduced during an earlier network capacity upgrade that surfaced after a recent network change, clarifying it was not a cyberattack or AI-related problem. Recovery efforts were complicated by servers failing automated health checks and a backlog of undelivered emails. Microsoft restored services gradually to ensure stability, extending its email timeout window to 48 hours to prevent message loss. Asia-Pacific was the first region to stabilize on November 13, followed by Europe and North America, with email queues approaching normal levels by that afternoon.