TL;DR — the direct answer: A global Microsoft 365 outage stretched into a second day on Friday, 13 November, leaving Outlook, Teams and the Copilot assistant disrupted for users in dozens of countries. The problems began on Thursday afternoon when a large number of Microsoft's servers became unexpectedly unavailable, and the company's fixes kept failing as restored servers went down again once live traffic reached them. Microsoft says it has no evidence of malicious activity, and by Friday it was reporting early signs of recovery — but it has given no time for a full fix and no confirmed root cause.
What happened: The disruption began at about 16:17 UTC on Thursday, 12 November, when users in the Americas lost access to their Exchange Online mailboxes. About two hours later Microsoft opened a wider incident covering Microsoft 365 services in any region, tracked under the IDs EX1550543 and MO1550821. Outage tracker Downdetector logged reports from 74 countries, with the peak for Outlook put at more than 120,000 reports by some outlets and nearly 140,000 by others. Features that depend on Exchange Online were hit across Outlook email and calendars, Teams, SharePoint, Copilot, Planner, To Do, Intune, Purview and Power BI. Users could not open mailboxes, send or receive email, load Copilot Chat or reach cloud PCs, and email delivery was delayed.
Why it's trending: Microsoft 365 is the plumbing of the modern office, with more than 430 million people using its apps, so a day-long failure hits businesses, schools, government agencies and hospitals at once. The outage forced some businesses and financial institutions to fall back on telephones, fax machines and Bluetooth to keep working, and one US industrial technology company delayed an earnings call because of it. Government systems in Singapore and Japan were disrupted, as were communications at the Supreme Court of the Philippines. The fact that the outage dragged into a second day, with Microsoft's own fixes failing to hold, turned a technical incident into one of the week's biggest technology stories.
Background / context: Microsoft said a large number of its servers became 'unexpectedly unavailable', putting elevated load on the rest — and that the extra strain had not come from a rise in traffic. The central problem, the company explained, is that restored servers 'can become unresponsive again once they receive traffic', so each wave of recovery collapsed under the weight of users reconnecting. By late morning UTC on Friday, Microsoft reported incremental improvement after applying a patch to part of its infrastructure, with mailbox access and delayed email processing improving, though capacity had not fully returned to normal. To protect email during the recovery, Microsoft extended the email timeout window to 48 hours so delayed messages would not bounce.
What we know / what's unconfirmed: Confirmed: the start time and the two incident IDs, the services affected, the scale of Downdetector reports across 74 countries, the pattern of restored servers failing again under traffic, and the recovery progress reported on Friday. Microsoft has also confirmed there is no evidence of malicious activity — executive vice president Charles Lamanna said there was 'no indication this is the result of malicious or cyber activity'. Unconfirmed: the root cause. Microsoft has said it is pursuing multiple workstreams to pinpoint the cause of the server failures and has promised a post-incident report once the disruption is contained, but it has not said when that report will appear or when full service will return.
What happens next: Microsoft is gradually restoring traffic across the affected infrastructure and clearing the backlog of delayed email, warning that some users may still face intermittent access problems. Administrators can follow the incident under ID MO1550821 in the Microsoft 365 admin center or on the Microsoft 365 status page. The bigger questions come after the fix: what knocked out so many servers at once, why the recovery kept collapsing, and whether the promised post-incident report leads to changes in how Microsoft protects its most widely used workplace services. Until then, users are being told to expect occasional delays and to retry if a mailbox or a Copilot response fails to load.
Q: Which Microsoft services were affected by the outage?
A: Outlook email and calendars, Teams, SharePoint, Copilot, Planner, To Do, Intune, Purview and Power BI — all features that depend on Exchange Online. Core Teams functions such as joining calls and group chats were mostly unaffected, but calendar tasks could fail.
Q: When did the Microsoft 365 outage start?
A: At about 16:17 UTC on Thursday, 12 November, when users in the Americas lost access to Exchange Online mailboxes. It widened into a global incident about two hours later and was still not fully fixed on Friday.
Q: Was the outage caused by a cyberattack?
A: Microsoft says no. The company said it has no evidence of malicious activity, and executive vice president Charles Lamanna confirmed there was no indication of a cyberattack or a security breach.
Q: How many people were affected?
A: Downdetector logged reports from 74 countries, with a peak of more than 120,000 Outlook problem reports. Microsoft has not published a total number of affected users; more than 430 million people use Microsoft 365 apps.
Q: Is Microsoft 365 back to normal yet?
A: Not fully. On Friday Microsoft reported improvements in mailbox access and email delivery, but said capacity had not returned to normal and some users could still face intermittent problems. No time for full recovery has been given.
Sources: The Thursday Times — Microsoft outage: Outlook, Teams, and Copilot disrupted in 74 countries for a second day, gHacks — Microsoft 365 Outage Enters Its Second Day as Outlook, Teams, and Copilot Stay Down Worldwide, and Outlook India — Microsoft Outage Continues on Day 2; Yet To Identify Any Malicious Activity.
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