Microsoft 365 Outage Hits Outlook, Teams Worldwide
A Microsoft 365 outage left users around the world unable to reach Outlook, Teams and Copilot on Thursday night, as Microsoft worked to fix problems with its mail and workplace services.
Microsoft first reported problems with Exchange Online mailboxes in the Americas at around 10:54pm PKT on Thursday, ProPakistani reported. Soon after, the company confirmed that the Microsoft 365 outage could affect users in any region, not only the Americas.
Users found they could not open their mailboxes through Outlook on the web, through mobile email apps that use Exchange ActiveSync, or through other connection methods. The disruption hit at the end of the working day in Pakistan, where many offices, banks and government departments rely on Outlook and Teams for daily work.
Microsoft 365 outage: which services went down
Microsoft listed five services that could be affected by the incident, which it is tracking as EX1550543. The list covers the core tools that most workplaces use every day.
The affected services were Exchange Online, which powers Outlook email, Microsoft Teams, SharePoint Online, Microsoft 365 Copilot and Microsoft Defender XDR. That meant email, team chats, shared files, the AI assistant and part of the security system could all be hit at once.
Outage tracker Downdetector recorded the scale of the problem. It logged more than 130,000 reports from people having trouble with Outlook at 1:27pm ET, which was 11:27pm in Pakistan. It also recorded more than 46,000 reports about Microsoft 365 as a whole and about 3,000 reports about Teams, Reuters reported.
What caused the outage
Microsoft said part of its infrastructure was facing heavy load across several regions, and that the load was the likely cause of the connection errors. The company is also looking at an unexpected rise in a specific type of service traffic to see whether it added to the problem. To reduce the impact, Microsoft has paused all deployments, spread connection traffic across its worldwide infrastructure, moved more traffic away from the affected systems and started restarting the servers that were hit.
The cause is still under review. Microsoft has not blamed any outside attack, and it has not linked the outage to a single failed system.
A second disruption earlier in the day
The outage followed a separate Teams disruption in North America earlier on Thursday. Microsoft said that problem was fully fixed by around 10:09pm PKT, less than an hour before the wider outage began.
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What the outage means for users in Pakistan
For Pakistani users, the timing was awkward. The outage began late in the evening, so many office workers found their email down as they tried to finish the day’s work. Anyone who needed to send a file or join a late meeting on Teams would have been stuck until the service came back. People who use Outlook on their phones were affected too, since the problem sat with Exchange Online rather than with any single app.
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Microsoft is sharing updates in the Microsoft 365 admin centre under incident EX1550543. Users can check there for the latest status, and IT teams can watch for word that the affected systems are back to normal.
Frequently asked questions
What services did the Microsoft 365 outage affect?
Exchange Online, Microsoft Teams, SharePoint Online, Microsoft 365 Copilot and Microsoft Defender XDR were listed as potentially affected.
When did the Microsoft 365 outage start?
Microsoft first reported problems with Exchange Online mailboxes in the Americas at around 10:54pm PKT on Thursday, November 12. It then confirmed the issue could affect users in any region.
How many users were affected by the outage?
Microsoft has not given a total. Downdetector logged more than 130,000 reports about Outlook at 1:27pm ET, plus more than 46,000 reports about Microsoft 365 and about 3,000 about Teams.
What caused the Microsoft 365 outage?
Microsoft blamed heavy load on part of its infrastructure across several regions. It is also reviewing an unexpected rise in a specific type of service traffic.
Is the outage fixed yet?
Microsoft has not given a time for full recovery. It has paused deployments, spread traffic across its infrastructure and started restarting affected servers.
