Microsoft 365 Outage: Outlook, Teams Down in 74 Countries; Company Says It Was Not a Cyberattack

A massive Microsoft 365 outage has cut off millions of users from Outlook email, Teams and Copilot for more than a day. Problems were reported in 74 countries and territories, and Microsoft says the disruption was caused by its own servers failing, not by a cyberattack, according to Al Jazeera.

The outage started on Thursday at around 18:00 UTC, which is about 11:30 pm in India, as per The Register. It was still causing trouble on Friday.

Microsoft 365 outage: key points↑

1. Services hit: Outlook, Exchange Online, Teams, Copilot, SharePoint, OneDrive
2. Spread: Reports from 74 countries and territories
3. Cause (so far): Servers failing automatic health checks and overloading others
4. Cyberattack? Microsoft says no
5. Status: A patch is showing positive results; full recovery being monitored

What went wrong?↑

Microsoft first said some servers were failing its automatic "health checks" and becoming unavailable. When those servers dropped out, their traffic moved to the remaining servers, which then became overloaded. Microsoft described this as an "elevated load" on its systems, as explained by Forbes.

The company's early fixes did not work as expected. It then paused all deployments and began restarting servers. Later, Microsoft said it was seeing positive results after applying a patch to a part of its authentication and routing setup.

The problem mainly affected services linked to Exchange Online and email. Teams calls and meetings were largely working, but calendars and scheduling features that depend on Exchange were not.

Was it a cyberattack?↑

Microsoft says it is not aware of any malicious activity behind the outage. Executive vice-president Charles Lamanna said the outage did not appear to be a cyberattack, according to Euronews. Microsoft has promised a detailed Post-Incident Report once the problem is fully fixed.

An outage stops people from reaching their emails and files. It does not mean anyone else has seen them.

Who was affected?↑

Microsoft says more than 430 million people use its 365 apps. Offices, schools, banks and governments were hit. In Australia, even the intelligence agency ASIO and the Australian Federal Police were caught up in the outage, as per IBTimes UK.

What should you do?↑

1. Use other channels: For urgent work, call or message colleagues instead of email.
2. Check official updates: Follow Microsoft's service health page and its official social media accounts.
3. Watch out for scams: Do not click on emails or links that claim to "fix" your Outlook. Fraudsters often use big outages to send fake messages.
4. Save work offline: Keep local copies of important files when cloud services are unstable.
5. 
   

This outage comes on a busy day for global tech news. Read our report on Jensen Huang's resignation as Nvidia CEO, and see how AI is changing advertising in our story on Razorpay and OpenAI.

FAQ

Q1. Is Microsoft Outlook down today?

Outlook and other Microsoft 365 services faced a major outage from Thursday night, with problems continuing on Friday, November 13.

Q2. What caused the Microsoft 365 outage?

Microsoft says failing servers and overload caused it. A full root cause has not been published yet.

Q3. Was the Microsoft outage a cyberattack?

Microsoft says there is no sign of a cyberattack.

Q4. Is my data safe?

An outage blocks access; it does not by itself mean data was stolen.

Q5. Which services were affected?

Outlook, Exchange Online, Teams, Copilot, SharePoint and OneDrive.