Most Microsoft services in S’pore restored after outage that lasted more than 24 hours

Microsoft's email services in Singapore experienced a prolonged outage, impacting hundreds of thousands of users worldwide. The disruption began around 5:25pm GMT on November 12, or 1:25am the following morning in Singapore, according to Ookla. This outage marked one of the longest in Microsoft's history, and the second such disruption in 2026, as reported by Reuters.

Various government agencies, including the Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore, Singapore Land Authority, Singhealth, and the Singapore Police Force, announced that their email services were restored on November 14. Additionally, major banks such as DBS, UOB, and Maybank updated their Facebook pages confirming that their email services were back online. Reports of issues with Microsoft Outlook peaked at 1,135 at approximately 9:30am Singapore time on November 13, gradually decreasing to 347 by 8:45pm on the same day.

Microsoft confirmed in a media response on November 13 that some government systems were affected by the disruption. They were collaborating with Microsoft to restore the services. Notably, education sectors like the Singapore Institute of Technology and the Singapore University of Social Sciences were also affected by the outage. The email services for these institutions were among the impacted.

The disruption peaked at nearly 20,000 reports per minute on Downdetector, with more than 7.4 million reports logged globally. Microsoft attributed the issue to a problem that arose during an earlier network capacity upgrade, which surfaced following a recent network change. The company reported that the incident was not related to cyber threats or AI agents.

Microsoft indicated that they would provide a comprehensive post-incident report once their review was complete. The Straits Times reached out to GovTech for further information.