Major Microsoft 365 Outage Continues

The worldwide Microsoft 365 outage continues, leaving users unable to access email and disrupting features in Teams, Copilot, and other services, although Microsoft says recovery efforts are making progress.

Issues emerged on Thursday, November 12, with nearly 130,000 Outlook reports recorded on Downdetector shortly after 1 p.m. Eastern, according to the Associated Press. The disruption extended to businesses and government operations, with Japan confirming a significant impact on government IT systems.

Exchange Online is at the center of the incident. Microsoft's service health page says affected users may have trouble opening mailboxes through Outlook on the web, desktop, and mobile. Messages may also be delayed.

Exchange accounts accessed through other clients such as Apple Mail are also experiencing problems because the disruption involves Microsoft's underlying infrastructure. Similarly, the disruption has reached third-party AI services that connect to Microsoft accounts.

The outage is also interrupting Microsoft 365 features that rely on Exchange. Copilot chats may fail, and the assistant may be unable to retrieve work emails, calendars, or files. Microsoft has identified additional problems involving Planner, To Do, administrative tools, and some SharePoint functions, although files stored directly in SharePoint remain accessible.

Microsoft Teams is not entirely offline. Microsoft says that most calling, meeting, and messaging functions remain available, but users may encounter errors when scheduling meetings, handling invitations, or editing calendar entries. Some contact and channel management features are also affected.

Microsoft's latest update said repairs across parts of the Asia Pacific region were improving mailbox access and helping delayed emails move through the system. The company is extending that work to other regions and adding capacity, but some users may still experience intermittent failures.

Microsoft has increased the email timeout window to 48 hours to help protect delayed messages while backlogs clear. It says it has found no evidence of malicious activity and has not provided a deadline for full restoration.