A widespread global outage affecting Microsoft services, including Outlook, Teams and its AI assistant Copilot, disrupted access for users and businesses across several countries on Thursday, November 13.
The disruption also affected Microsoft 365 applications such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, SharePoint and OneDrive. Users in India, Australia, Taiwan and other regions reported problems accessing services, sending and receiving emails, loading inboxes and joining workplace communications.
Microsoft said its efforts to restore services were “not going as expected” and that it was exploring alternative ways to address capacity problems.
“We’ve monitored the status of the changes applied to improve serviceability and confirmed they’re not taking as expected. We’re identifying alternate workstreams that can be applied to increase capacity in the face of sustained traffic management imbalances,” the company said in a post on X.
More than 100,000 users report Outlook problems
Outage tracker Downdetector recorded nearly 130,000 reports of problems accessing Outlook shortly after 1 pm. Reports later declined from the peak, although users continued to report difficulties.
According to Downdetector, the disruption spread to 74 countries and territories within about an hour. Reports concerning Microsoft 365, Copilot, Teams and OneDrive each rose more than a hundredfold, while reports related to Azure increased around a hundredfold.
Microsoft initially said it was investigating an outage affecting users in the Americas. It later confirmed that connectivity problems were affecting Microsoft 365 services across multiple regions.
The company attributed the disruption to elevated infrastructure loads across several regions. It also said some servers had failed automated health checks and that attempts to bring them back online were not taking effect immediately.
In a later update, Microsoft reported limited recovery as it worked to redirect user traffic away from affected servers. It cautioned that users might experience a gradual restoration as applications reconnected but did not provide a timeline for a complete resolution.
Businesses and government services affected
The outage disrupted operations at several businesses, including companies that depend on Microsoft services for internal communication and customer support.
In India, Bharti Airtel reported disruptions to internal communications, with employees unable to access emails and share alerts about customer outages. The disruption also increased calls to the telecom operator’s call centres, according to a senior company official quoted by The Hindu.
IndiGo said its email support services had been affected and that it might not be able to receive customer emails. Air India, however, said its flight operations remained unaffected.
A Big Four professional services firm also reported disruptions to its internal work, although services were gradually being restored. Its IT team said Microsoft was prioritising restoration in the Asia-Pacific region.
The outage also affected businesses beyond those directly using Microsoft’s platforms. Rahul Ganapathy, co-founder and CEO of Atsuya Technologies, said emails sent to customers using Microsoft services and scheduled Teams meetings had been disrupted.
The impact extended to government systems overseas. Japan’s Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Masanao Ozaki said the outage had affected government IT infrastructure. New Zealand’s Foreign Ministry reported problems receiving emails at its offices, embassies, consulates and representative offices worldwide.
Meanwhile, Swiss luxury group Richemont, which owns Cartier, delayed the announcement of its first-half results because of the disruption.
Microsoft had earlier said that Teams services in North America had been restored, although some users continued to report connectivity problems. The company has yet to announce a timeline for the full restoration of all affected services.
