Global outage hits Microsoft, Outlook, Teams down for over 20 hours; company reacts

Microsoft 365 services continued to face disruptions for thousands of users on Friday, with recovery efforts progressing in phases but system capacity yet to return to normal. Microsoft has extended the email timeout window to 48 hours to protect delayed messages as it works through growing mail queues and backlogs.

"Recovery actions are ongoing across affected Microsoft 365 infrastructure and progressing in phases. We’re seeing incremental improvement in several workloads, but service health remains variable and capacity has not yet fully returned to baseline. To protect delayed mail, we’ve extended the email timeout window to 48 hours while queue and backlog processing continues," the US tech giant said in its latest update.

The company added that a more comprehensive update was available under incident reference MO1550821 in the Microsoft 365 admin centre.

Users unable to access the admin centre can track the situation through its service status page.

The latest development comes after Microsoft 365, Outlook, Teams and several other Microsoft applications remained disrupted for thousands of users for over 12 hours on Friday, leaving many struggling to access emails, attend meetings and carry out routine workplace tasks.

The outage also spilt over to other technology platforms, affecting OpenAI and Anthropic's AI services through their Microsoft 365 connectors.

Reports of Outlook outages on Downdetector peaked at around 1.30 am on Friday, with 1,38,058 reports, before falling to approximately 34,490 by 4.30 am.

Microsoft had earlier said its investigation had identified a process responsible for establishing secure connections on the affected servers as a key factor behind the disruption.

The process was becoming overwhelmed, causing servers to stop processing requests.

The company has issued more than 15 updates on X since the outage was first reported, outlining its efforts to restore services.

In one of its earlier updates, Microsoft said it was scaling up virtual machines to increase capacity and reduce the load on its systems. It was also attempting to fix machines stuck in a faulty state by forcing a synchronisation of recent network changes, which could improve service availability.

However, some machines were not syncing as expected, slowing down the recovery process.

Earlier, the tech giant said it was preparing a configuration change to address the issue. The change was being tested on a subset of servers before being rolled out more widely, alongside restarts of the affected infrastructure.

Microsoft was also reversing a recent network configuration change that coincided with the start of the outage to determine whether it had contributed to the disruption.

The company said temporary traffic restrictions had been introduced in certain locations.

It was monitoring the affected servers to check whether they remained stable while handling fewer connections before gradually restoring additional traffic.

Microsoft also clarified that the problem was not caused by an overall increase in traffic, but by fewer servers being available to manage it.

"We are aware and investigating reports of users experiencing issues with Microsoft 365 services, primarily issues with Exchange Online," a Microsoft spokesperson said.

The outage affected several services that depend on Exchange Online and email infrastructure, although features that do not rely on these services continued to function.

MICROSOFT OUTAGE HITS BUSINESSES

The Microsoft outage disrupted businesses and public services globally, with its impact extending to India's aviation sector.

IndiGo warned that its email support system was affected and customers might not receive responses, advising those seeking urgent assistance to contact 6E Skai through its website or app. The airline said other support channels remained operational.

Air India, meanwhile, said its flights and customer communication systems were unaffected, adding that it had rerouted email traffic to ensure messages were received and responses sent within 24 hours.

The disruption also affected government agencies in Australia, Japan and Singapore, as well as the Philippines Supreme Court. While some reported email-related issues and possible delays in public responses, authorities said alternative communication channels helped maintain essential operations.

WHICH MICROSOFT SERVICES WERE AFFECTED?

Exchange Online users faced difficulties accessing their mailboxes through Outlook on the web, desktop applications and mobile connections, while email delivery was also delayed.

The disruption extended to Microsoft 365 apps, where users were unable to access recently used files, and the Microsoft 365 admin centre, where some pages failed to load.

Microsoft Copilot was also affected, with users reporting difficulties loading Copilot Chat or receiving responses through web and desktop applications. Its ability to access work-related data, including emails, calendars and files, was also disrupted.

Microsoft Teams continued to support core messaging and online meetings largely normally. However, features dependent on Exchange Online, including calendars, meeting scheduling and creating chats in organisations using Information Barriers, were affected.

Other impacted services included Microsoft Planner, Microsoft To Do, Microsoft Defender, Microsoft Purview, Microsoft Graph, Microsoft Fabric, Power BI, SharePoint Online, Universal Print and Windows 365.

The disruption also affected Microsoft 365 Education features, including Assignments, Reading Progress and Speaker Progress. Some Microsoft Intune services were also listed among the affected products.

Microsoft said features that did not depend on Exchange Online remained functional.

OPENAI, ANTHROPIC SERVICES ALSO HIT

The disruption extended beyond Microsoft's own applications to third-party services relying on its infrastructure.

OpenAI said it was investigating an issue with Microsoft connectors that could prevent new connections and cause tools to malfunction.

Anthropic said it had identified an issue with an upstream provider affecting its Microsoft 365 connector.

The outage also affected businesses. Electric truckmaker Workhorse Group rescheduled its third-quarter results announcement from November 12 to November 16, citing business disruptions caused by the global Microsoft outage.

The incident comes weeks after Microsoft reported a disruption to its Azure cloud platform, which affected its productivity software suite and businesses across several industries worldwide.