Microsoft outage hits Outlook, Teams and Copilot, disrupting thousands

On Thursday, 12 November, Microsoft experienced a significant service interruption that disrupted thousands of users across various platforms. The primary affected tools were Outlook, the company's email platform, Teams, its communications platform, and Copilot, an artificial intelligence-based assistant. The disruption was particularly severe in the Americas, with users reporting issues in multiple regions.

According to reports collected by the Downdetector website, over 120,000 users in the United States encountered difficulties with Outlook around 1:30 pm Eastern time. This number increased to over 130,000 users by subsequent reports. The main issue was the inability to access mailboxes, send or receive messages, and delays in email delivery.

In addition to Outlook, more than 46,000 reports were made concerning Microsoft 365, while around 3,000 users reported problems with Microsoft Teams. Disruption was also noted for Copilot, the company's AI-powered assistant. Microsoft acknowledged the issue and stated it was working to identify the source of the problem.

The company initially reported receiving user complaints about the inability to access Exchange Online mailboxes through various connection methods in the Americas. Later, Microsoft identified high infrastructure load as a possible cause of the outage, which led to connection errors. To mitigate the impact, Microsoft announced plans to redistribute traffic across its infrastructure to rebalance the load and restore connectivity.

Initial problems with Teams were also reported during the day. Microsoft confirmed that it had resolved the issues affecting the service in North America, although some users still reported connection difficulties. However, the company did not disclose further details about the cause of the fault or provide an overall estimate of the number of users affected. The figures from Downdetector, which collects user reports, do not necessarily reflect the actual number of people impacted by the interruption.