Microsoft struggles to restore Outlook, teams and Copilot services after global outage

Microsoft is continuing efforts to restore its workplace services following a widespread outage that disrupted access to Outlook, Teams, Copilot and other Microsoft 365 applications across several countries.

The disruption began on Thursday, November 12, and affected users around the world. While some regions have reported partial recovery, several users continue to experience difficulties accessing the services.

In its latest update on November 13, Microsoft said it was working to restore its front-end servers and implementing traffic optimisation measures to improve service stability and increase capacity. The company said it had redistributed traffic, adjusted protocols and introduced strategic traffic-blocking measures.

However, Microsoft acknowledged that these measures had not resulted in sustained recovery. The company said it was reviewing additional steps to stabilise its infrastructure.

According to Downdetector, outage reports on November 12 spread across 74 countries and territories within about an hour. Reports concerning five Microsoft services reportedly peaked at 19,650 per minute, compared with fewer than 15 reports per minute on an average Thursday.

Outlook outage reports rose to more than 2,000 times their normal levels, while reports involving Microsoft 365, Copilot, Teams and OneDrive increased more than a hundredfold, according to Downdetector.

Microsoft said its investigation found that the elevated server load was not caused by increased user traffic but by several servers becoming unexpectedly unavailable. The company has not yet disclosed the precise cause of the disruption.

The outage also affected governments and businesses that rely on Microsoft's workplace applications. Microsoft said it was continuing to examine affected infrastructure and network logs to identify the source of the failures and determine further corrective measures.