{
  "id": 19768109,
  "title": "Microsoft Down: Why Are Outlook, Teams & Copilot Facing Such A Massive Outage Globally?",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/11/13/microsoft-down-why-are-outlook-teams-copilot-facing-such-a-massive",
  "topic": "ai",
  "section": "AI",
  "published": "2026-11-13T06:12:42.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "Free Press Journal",
    "slug": "free-press-journal",
    "url": "https://www.freepressjournal.in/tech/microsoft-down-why-are-outlook-teams-copilot-facing-such-a-massive-outage-globally"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "A major outage struck Microsoft's suite of services on Thursday, crippling Outlook, Teams, and Copilot for users worldwide. The disruption persisted for over five hours in some cases, with reports piling up on Downdetector numbering around 138,000 complaints in the US at its peak. Although Microsoft initially identified issues in the Americas, reports soon spread globally, with Service NSW in Australia warning of unavailable transactions. Major services like Exchange Online, Teams, SharePoint Online, Copilot, Defender XDR, and several Purview services were reportedly affected.\n\nMicrosoft attributed the incident to a large number of servers unexpectedly becoming unavailable, overwhelming the remaining infrastructure and taxing the software responsible for establishing secure connections. Additionally, recent configuration updates were being investigated as potential contributors, and all deployments and changes were paused during the review. The recovery process faced challenges, as restored servers sometimes became unresponsive once again once they received traffic. Microsoft attempted to restart unresponsive servers, reroute traffic, and temporarily limit affected traffic in certain locations. They also tried rebuilding some servers on a previous configuration to test if that would alleviate the issues.\n\nThe outage proved peculiar, as Teams' core chat and online meeting functions remained largely functional, but scheduling meetings or accessing the calendar often failed. This was attributed to Teams relying on Exchange Online, the service responsible for storing and delivering work email and managing calendars. Similarly, ChatGPT and Claude from OpenAI were affected as the Microsoft 365 connectors that allow AI assistants to access users' email, calendar, and files with permission were impacted. OpenAI and Anthropic both reported failures in new connections and certain functions, causing problems with email, calendar, and search requests in Claude inside Outlook. Microsoft's Copilot also struggled to access work email, calendars, and files during the outage.",
  "summary": "A widespread Microsoft 365 outage on Thursday left users around the world unable to open Outlook inboxes and disrupted Teams and the Copilot AI assistant. Some users were affected for more than five hours, and the problems carried into Friday morning in India. How big is the disruption? Downdetector logged about 138,000 Outlook problem reports at the US peak, around 1 pm Eastern time (about 11:30…",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 12,
    "also_reported_by": [
      {
        "outlet": "Mashable",
        "title": "Microsoft outage: Microsoft 365, Teams, Outlook, Copilot all impacted",
        "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/11/12/microsoft-outage-microsoft-365-teams-outlook-copilot-all-impacted",
        "published": "2026-11-12T19:14:07.000Z"
      },
      {
        "outlet": "ProPakistani",
        "title": "Microsoft 365 Outage Hits Outlook, Teams and Copilot Worldwide",
        "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/11/12/microsoft-365-outage-hits-outlook-teams-and-copilot-worldwide",
        "published": "2026-11-12T19:18:18.000Z"
      },
      {
        "outlet": "Euronews",
        "title": "Microsoft outage hits Outlook, Teams and Copilot, disrupting thousands",
        "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/11/12/microsoft-outage-hits-outlook-teams-and-copilot-disrupting-thousands",
        "published": "2026-11-12T19:38:47.000Z"
      },
      {
        "outlet": "The Business Times - Companies & Markets",
        "title": "Microsoft says it’s working to fix Outlook, Copilot outage",
        "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/11/12/microsoft-says-its-working-to-fix-outlook-copilot-outage",
        "published": "2026-11-12T22:50:04.000Z"
      },
      {
        "outlet": "Malay Mail",
        "title": "Microsoft scrambles ‘aggressively’ as widespread outage hits Outlook, Teams, and Copilot worldwide",
        "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/11/13/microsoft-scrambles-aggressively-as-widespread-outage-hits-outlook",
        "published": "2026-11-13T02:24:07.000Z"
      },
      {
        "outlet": "Hindustan Times - World News",
        "title": "Microsoft outage: Outlook, Copilot and Teams remain disrupted, over 200,000 user issues reported",
        "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/11/13/microsoft-outage-outlook-copilot-and-teams-remain-disrupted-over-200",
        "published": "2026-11-13T03:39:42.000Z"
      },
      {
        "outlet": "The Indian Express",
        "title": "Outlook, Teams, Copilot hit globally; Microsoft says attempts to fix not going ‘as expected’",
        "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/11/13/outlook-teams-copilot-hit-globally-microsoft-says-attempts-to-fix-not",
        "published": "2026-11-13T04:04:01.000Z"
      },
      {
        "outlet": "The Citizen",
        "title": "Microsoft outage hits Outlook, Teams and Copilot across 74 countries",
        "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/11/13/microsoft-outage-hits-outlook-teams-and-copilot-across-74-countries",
        "published": "2026-11-13T04:05:13.000Z"
      },
      {
        "outlet": "The Guardian Australia",
        "title": "A global Microsoft 365 outage has hit thousands – what happened and when will it be fixed?",
        "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/11/13/a-global-microsoft-365-outage-has-hit-thousands-what-happened-and",
        "published": "2026-11-13T04:46:47.000Z"
      },
      {
        "outlet": "Moneyweb",
        "title": "Microsoft tries to fix Outlook and Copilot hours into outage",
        "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/11/13/microsoft-tries-to-fix-outlook-and-copilot-hours-into-outage",
        "published": "2026-11-13T05:54:08.000Z"
      },
      {
        "outlet": "People Daily Kenya",
        "title": "Microsoft explains unusual server problem prolonging global Outlook and Teams outage",
        "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/11/13/microsoft-explains-unusual-server-problem-prolonging-global-outlook",
        "published": "2026-11-13T06:51:43.000Z"
      }
    ]
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}