Major Microsoft 365 Outage Continues

A major Microsoft 365 outage persists, preventing users from accessing email and disrupting various features within Teams, Copilot, and other services. The issue surfaced on Thursday, November 12, with over 130,000 Outlook complaints logged on Downdetector shortly after 1 p.m. Eastern, according to the Associated Press. The disruption affected numerous organizations and government operations, notably impacting Japan's government IT systems.

Exchange Online, a crucial component of the issue, is causing difficulties as users struggle to open mailboxes via Outlook on web, desktop, and mobile platforms. Messages may also be delayed, and accounts accessed through other clients, such as Apple Mail, are experiencing issues due to the underlying infrastructure's disruption.

Third-party AI services linked to Microsoft accounts are also affected. Moreover, features reliant on Exchange, like Copilot chats, Planner, To Do, administrative tools, and certain SharePoint functions, are struggling, while files stored directly in SharePoint remain accessible. While Microsoft Teams is not entirely offline, users may encounter errors when scheduling meetings, managing invitations, or editing calendars, and some contact and channel management features are also impacted.

Microsoft's latest update indicates that repairs in the Asia Pacific region are progressing, aiding in restoring mailbox access and reducing delays, but some intermittent failures may continue. The company is extending its efforts to additional regions and increasing capacity, yet some users may still face intermittent issues. Microsoft has extended the email timeout window to 48 hours to safeguard delayed messages during the backlog clearance process.

No evidence of malicious activity has been detected, and Microsoft has not set a deadline for a complete restoration.