Microsoft outage knocks Outlook and Teams offline

A Microsoft outage cut off tens of thousands of people from Outlook email on Thursday, November 12, with Teams, Copilot and other Microsoft 365 services also affected. Microsoft said some servers had unexpectedly gone offline, and recovery was still only partial hours later, Al Jazeera and The Verge reported.

The problems began just before 1pm US Eastern Time on Thursday, which was around 1am on Friday in Thailand. That timing meant many users in Asia woke up to find their inboxes still struggling.

How big was the Microsoft outage?

Reports of Outlook problems on the outage tracking site Downdetector climbed to about 130,000 shortly after 1pm ET (18:00 GMT), according to Al Jazeera, which cited Reuters. By just before 3pm ET, that number had fallen to about 77,000.

Users described a range of issues. Some said emails were not being sent or received, while others could not open their inboxes at all, either on the web or in apps. Microsoft said the problems could affect users in any region.

Services reported as affected included:

• Outlook email, the most widely reported problem
• Exchange Online, the email system behind business accounts
• Teams, Microsoft's workplace messaging app
• Copilot, the company's AI assistant
• Other Microsoft 365 business services

What Microsoft said

Microsoft acknowledged the issue quickly through its Microsoft 365 Status account. It said a portion of its infrastructure was experiencing elevated load across multiple regions, which was likely contributing to connection errors, The Verge reported.

Microsoft communications director Ben Hope said the company was investigating reports of problems with Microsoft 365 services, primarily with Exchange Online, and thanked customers for their patience.

According to Al Jazeera, Microsoft later said on X that servers were unavailable and failing automatic health checks. That put extra pressure on the servers still running. The company said it was testing a configuration change to redistribute traffic and restarting affected services to bring them back online.

Slow recovery

The Verge said Microsoft went through several versions of its update notes over the afternoon, describing difficulties rebooting servers and monitoring their health.

By about 6pm ET, Microsoft said it had begun returning some affected servers to service and that they were stable so far. It had also shifted traffic to alternative pathways where possible and seen limited recovery in some regions. The company added that it was applying protective traffic management in one location to reduce load, and would expand the measures if results were positive.

Microsoft warned that users might see a gradual recovery as their email apps reconnect. It did not give a time for full restoration. Early on Friday morning Bangkok time, The Verge's headline still described Outlook as down.

What users can do during a Microsoft outage

When a cloud service fails at the server level, there is usually little an individual user can fix. A few simple steps can still help:

• Check the official Microsoft 365 Status account before changing passwords or settings.
• Keep the Outlook app open; messages should sync as servers come back.
• Use phone or another messaging channel for urgent work contacts.
• Be wary of emails or messages claiming to "fix" your account, as scammers often exploit outages.

That last point matters in Thailand, where officials regularly warn about phishing. Our report on the Thailand cyber alert explains common tricks, and our story on Apple threat notifications covers how tech companies flag targeted attacks.

Why it matters

Outlook and Teams are central tools for offices, schools and businesses around the world, including in Thailand. A disruption lasting several hours shows how much daily work depends on a small number of cloud providers.

In its updates so far, Microsoft had not explained what caused the servers to go offline in the first place. Businesses will be watching for a full incident report once services are back to normal. For more on how big tech platforms handle support problems, see our earlier story on the Apple Support Community.

Image: Building 92 at Microsoft's headquarters in Redmond, Washington; the company is working to recover from the Microsoft outage. Photo by Coolcaesar, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.