Photo: Shutterstock
The outage began on Thursday, 12 November, and continued into Friday. According to Downdetector, reports of problems came from 74 countries and territories. At its peak, nearly 130,000 complaints about Outlook were recorded in the US alone. Users reported being unable to open their email or send and receive messages.
Microsoft explained that the disruption was caused by a portion of its servers becoming inoperable, which placed an increased load on the remaining infrastructure. The servers began to fail automatic health checks and shut down. Restarting the equipment and redistributing traffic did not immediately produce the expected result. The company has not yet identified the exact root cause of the failure. However, Microsoft has found no evidence of a cyberattack.
The consequences of the outage extended beyond corporate email systems. According to the Associated Press, in the UK the problems affected the work of the police, government departments and the National Health Service (NHS). Some police units were temporarily unable to accept reports of crimes online, whilst pharmacies warned of possible delays in dispensing prescription medicines. In Norway, the disruption affected several ministries; in Singapore, the government’s email system stopped working; and the Supreme Court of the Philippines reported disruptions to the processing of electronic submissions.
Air India and IndiGo also experienced problems, though these did not affect flight operations. OpenAI and Anthropic also reported connection issues with Microsoft 365 tools.
In Romania, according to Downdetector, 342 reports of Outlook disruptions, 168 for Microsoft 365 and 39 for Teams were recorded on Friday morning. These figures reflect the number of complaints received, not the total number of affected users.
By Friday, Microsoft had reported the first sustained signs of recovery. Service availability and email delivery are gradually improving in North America, Europe and the Asia-Pacific region. However, the company warned that some users may still experience connection issues and delays in email delivery.
Microsoft has not disclosed the exact number of affected users. In January, the company reported that the number of paid commercial Microsoft 365 subscriptions exceeded 450 million. This figure represents the number of subscriptions, not the number of people directly affected by the current outage.
This story was translated with the assistance of artificial intelligence.
Follow our updates
Have information for the newsroom? Share it with Logos-Press
Comments
0No comments yet. You can start the conversation.
Comments are open to readers with a Logos Press account.
Sign in to comment