Microsoft outage disrupts Outlook, Teams, and Microsoft 365 globally

Microsoft's global outage disrupted Outlook, Teams, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and other Microsoft 365 services on November 12, with thousands of users still reporting problems on Friday, November 13. Microsoft attributed the issue to unexpected server failures, ruled out a traffic surge, and said there was no indication of a cyberattack. The disruption lasted over five hours on Thursday, with Down Detector showing nearly 130,000 reports of issues around 1pm ET affecting services including SharePoint, OneDrive, and enterprise tools. Microsoft identified failures in automated server health checks as a factor, causing servers to become unavailable and straining remaining infrastructure. Microsoft began restoring services by redistributing traffic and restarting affected servers, with limited recovery reported by Thursday evening. The company warned recovery would be gradual, and as of Friday, users continued reporting difficulties accessing inboxes and workplace applications.