If Outlook won’t load for you, you’re not the only one.
A Microsoft 365 outage has been knocking out email, Teams and other work apps since late Thursday morning, Nov. 12. More than six hours later, Microsoft says it still hasn’t found a fix that works.
“We’re opening all available pathways to restore service, as our actions taken thus far have not provided the anticipated relief,” the company posted shortly after 5 p.m. ET.
Microsoft’s first post about the outage on X has been viewed more than 8 million times.
All times are Eastern.
What’s down
Microsoft has confirmed problems with:
Outlook and Exchange Online email, on the web, desktop and mobile
Microsoft Teams
SharePoint Online
Microsoft 365 Copilot
Defender XDR
Planner and To Do
Intune, Purview and parts of Power BI
Users have also reported problems with OneDrive.
Downdetector reports started spiking around 12:30 p.m., and peaked at more than 131,000. By late afternoon they were still above 40,000.
Microsoft first said the problem was affecting users “in the Americas,” then confirmed it “may affect Microsoft 365 service connectivity for users in any region.”
It spread to 74 countries in about an hour
The outage didn’t stay in North America.
According to Downdetector, reports about Microsoft reached 74 countries and territories in about an hour. Downdetector counts a country once reports there hit ten times the normal level, with at least 20 reports in five minutes.
Here’s how fast it moved:
11:17 a.m. ET: Microsoft says its Exchange Online incident began.
12:25 p.m. ET: Outlook reports to Downdetector start climbing.
12:43 p.m. ET: Reports jump tenfold in the U.K., where it was 5:43 p.m.
1:25 p.m. ET: Reports about five Microsoft services hit 19,650 a minute. On an average Thursday, it’s fewer than 15.
2:38 p.m. ET: Reports were still coming in at more than 11,000 a minute.
Reports also jumped tenfold in India, where it was nearly midnight, and in New Zealand, where it was already Friday morning.
Between noon and about 2 p.m. ET, nearly three in 10 reports came from outside the U.S.
At their peak, Outlook reports were more than 2,000 times their normal level. Reports about Microsoft 365, Copilot, Teams and OneDrive each rose more than a hundredfold, and Azure about a hundredfold.
Is the whole internet down?
No. This is a Microsoft problem.
Posts circulating online claim that Gmail, AWS, Cloudflare, Zoom and other services are also going down. Downdetector did show small increases for some of them, but that often happens during a big outage, when people report problems to the services they think are broken.
There’s no confirmation that Google, Amazon or Cloudflare had a separate outage on Thursday. Downdetector’s data shows that even Microsoft’s own Xbox, GitHub and LinkedIn were affected far less than Outlook and Teams.
If Gmail or another service isn’t working for you, check that company’s official status page before assuming it’s part of this.
What Microsoft says went wrong
Microsoft’s explanation has changed over the course of the day.
First, it said part of its infrastructure was under “elevated load across multiple regions.”
Then it said that wasn’t because of extra traffic. Instead, “a number of servers being unexpectedly unavailable” was “straining the remaining infrastructure.”
The servers were failing automated health checks and dropping out of service. Microsoft said the failed checks “may originate from a specific component that’s responsible for processing server health.”
Its latest explanation: “a core process on affected servers is becoming overwhelmed, causing capacity loss.”
Microsoft says it hasn’t found “any recent change correlated with the start of impact,” but it’s checking whether undoing “a small number of recent configuration updates” could help. Nothing it has said points to a cyberattack.
How the day unfolded
| Time (ET) | What happened |
|---|---|
| 11:17 a.m. | Microsoft opens an incident for Exchange Online mailbox problems |
| ~12:30 p.m. | Downdetector reports start spiking |
| ~1 p.m. | Microsoft says users in any region may be affected |
| 1:26 p.m. | A wider Microsoft 365 incident opens, adding Teams, SharePoint and Copilot |
| ~2 p.m. | Microsoft pauses all deployments and starts restarting servers |
| ~2:45 p.m. | Microsoft tests a configuration change on affected servers |
| ~4 p.m. | A new health check method brings some servers back |
| ~5 p.m. | Microsoft says its fixes haven’t worked as hoped, and starts testing a recovery on an isolated part of its system |
There was also a separate Teams problem earlier in the morning, from about 9:45 to 10:53 a.m. Microsoft says that one was resolved.
What you can do right now
Check Microsoft’s status page, status.cloud.microsoft, or @MSFT365Status on X.
Don’t reinstall Office, rebuild your Outlook profile or reset your password. Microsoft hasn’t tied the problem to anything on your end, so none of that will help.
If you use classic Outlook, leave it open. It may still show emails and calendar items it already downloaded.
Reach people another way. If something’s urgent, call, text or post a notice.
Watch for scams. Big outages bring fake “Microsoft support” calls and emails. Microsoft won’t call you to fix this.
IT admins: follow incidents EX1550543 and MO1550821 in the Microsoft 365 admin center. Log what went down and when, in case your organization files for a service credit.
It’s been a rough month for Microsoft users in Western Canada
For many Canadians, this isn’t the first Microsoft problem this month.
When B.C., Alberta and Manitoba stopped changing their clocks on Nov. 1, Microsoft warned that Outlook calendars, Teams Rooms and other products could show meetings at the wrong time for users there. It told organizations to install the latest Windows updates and check their recurring meetings.
That’s a separate issue from today’s outage.
When will it be fixed?
Microsoft hasn’t said. It’s testing its latest recovery on a small part of its system before rolling it out more widely, and it warned that some delays could continue even after service comes back.
Once it’s over, Microsoft usually publishes a review explaining what went wrong. Until then, the cause is preliminary.
We’ll update this story when service is restored.
Sources:
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