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Microsoft apologises after a global outage disrupts Outlook, Teams and other services across 74 countries and territories.
Microsoft has apologised after a global outage disrupted its services across 74 countries and territories, affecting businesses, government agencies and public services. The company reported a broad recovery on Friday, November 13, but said it was still restoring full service to remaining customers and regions.
The disruption affected several Microsoft products, including Outlook, Teams and Microsoft 365. Healthcare services, airlines, schools and financial institutions were among those affected, with organisations reporting difficulties accessing email, managing communications and carrying out routine operations.
Microsoft ruled out malicious cyber activity and AI-related issues as the cause. It attributed the incident to a technical problem that originated during an earlier network capacity upgrade and surfaced following a subsequent network change.
“We are deeply sorry for the disruption this incident has caused our customers and partners,” Microsoft said in a statement, adding that it was seeing broad recovery and stability across its services.
The outage also affected public services in several countries. In the United Kingdom, National Health Service staff handling emergency calls faced difficulties referring patient details, creating a backlog. Indian airlines IndiGo and Akasa Air reported disruptions to their email support services, while Immigration New Zealand temporarily halted visa application processing.
Businesses and financial institutions also experienced operational challenges. European exchange operator Euronext reported email disruptions, while Danish shipping company Maersk warned customers of delayed updates. Some financial firms in Taiwan resorted to fax communications to confirm trades.
Microsoft said the disruption was linked to Exchange Online, its cloud-based messaging platform responsible for email, calendars, contacts and tasks. Services and features that did not depend on Exchange Online remained functional.
At its peak, Downdetector recorded more than 130,000 reports of Outlook problems in the United States. Reports subsequently declined as Microsoft worked to restore affected infrastructure and improve service availability across regions.
The incident has renewed concerns about the growing dependence of businesses and public institutions on a small number of technology providers. It also follows other Microsoft service disruptions reported this year, including an outage affecting its Azure cloud platform.
Microsoft said it had addressed the underlying issue and was continuing to restore services to affected customers and regions.
