Microsoft is working to restore its Outlook email and Microsoft 365 services after a major global outage disrupted access for individuals, businesses, and government agencies across 74 countries and territories.
The disruption, which began on Thursday, November 12, affected key workplace platforms including Outlook, Microsoft Teams, and the company’s artificial intelligence assistant, Copilot, leaving thousands of users unable to load inboxes or send messages.
According to outage-tracking platform Downdetector, user reports of Outlook issues peaked at nearly 140,000 globally, underscoring the widespread impact of the incident on daily operations.
While Microsoft initially attributed the failure to elevated traffic loads across its infrastructure and ruled out a cyberattack, its early recovery efforts—including restarting servers and rerouting traffic—hit setbacks as several systems became unresponsive again.
The tech giant has apologized for the prolonged disruption and stated that it is exploring alternative capacity measures and infrastructure adjustments to stabilize its servers and restore normal operations.
