Traffic distribution remained skewed, and engineers began weighing alternative ways to add capacity.
We are deeply sorry for the disruption this incident has caused our customers and partners. We know the trust they place in our services and take that responsibility extremely seriously. We are seeing broad recovery and stability across our services. This was a technical issue…
The IT failure forced some Japanese organizations back onto fax machines and landline phones.
We’ve monitored the status of the changes applied to improve serviceability and confirmed they're not taking as expected. We’re identifying alternate workstreams that can be applied to increase capacity in the face of sustained traffic management imbalances. More info under…
In the UK, hospital staff resorted to paper records, while ambulance services suffered a serious impact. Staff at Minshull Street crown court in Manchester scrambled to locate a working fax machine as computer systems went dark.
The disruption hit organizations across more than 70 countries and territories, according to Downdetector figures. Australia’s national domestic security and intelligence agency, Asio, alongside federal police, found their email systems caught up in the blackout.
Microsoft's outage reports on November 12 reached 74 countries and territories in about an hour on Downdetector. Microsoft says its Exchange Online incident began at 16:17 UTC. Reports to Downdetector about Outlook began climbing at about 17:25 UTC, 12:25 in New York. By 18:25,… pic.twitter.com/7FQ4dDsfbm
The company ruled out any malicious cyber or AI activity as the cause of the technical failure.
Services affected globally included Outlook, Teams, Exchange, SharePoint, OneDrive, Copilot, and Xbox, according to Microsoft. Electrical truck maker Workhorse Group rescheduled its third-quarter results announcement to November 16 due to business disruptions, while Switzerland’s Richemont briefly delayed its first-half results announcement.
The company stated on its Microsoft 365 status page that it had completed efforts to address the underlying issue and restored service to remaining impacted customers and regions.
Microsoft said that the incident stemmed from an issue during an earlier network capacity upgrade that surfaced following a recent network change. That change triggered health checks that caused servers to report themselves as unwell and shut down.
We’re seeing encouraging recovery progress, with service availability and email delivery performance improving across a growing portion of affected infrastructure. We know our customers rely on our services to get important work done every day, and regret the impact these outages…
Government operations, healthcare services, and courts experienced disruptions in at least 70 countries, with prominent operational hits recorded in Japan, Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
Microsoft’s Japan unit and global corporate spokespeople confirmed they found no evidence pointing to a cyberattack or any malicious AI activity.
We're investigating reports of users experiencing issues accessing Exchange Online mailboxes through multiple connection methods in the Americas. More details can be found in the Microsoft 365 admin center under EX1550543.