Microsoft's outage cut Outlook and Teams for hours, with about 130,000 Outlook reports. Microsoft said fixes had not brought expected relief.
The incident started at around 18:00 UTC on Thursday, The Register reported.
Exchange Online, Teams, Copilot 365 and Defender for Office 365 became unavailable. The outage tracker Downdetector logged about 130,000 Outlook problem reports at one point, CNBC reported.
Admins lost their view as well. Intune and the Microsoft 365 Apps Admin Center, the tools used to manage devices and diagnose problems, went down too.
Microsoft's status page said "our actions taken thus far have not provided the anticipated relief". It said a core process on the affected servers was becoming overwhelmed, and that it had found no recent change linked to the start.
By 00:35 UTC on Friday, Microsoft said some servers were back and "initially remain healthy", but could stop responding again once traffic returned. It had given no timeline for full restoration. The Stack saw no sign of a cyberattack.
A Microsoft spokesperson told CNBC the company was working to restore services as soon as possible.
On Thursday, the tools to check the damage went down with the services they watch.
Sources
Our file on Microsoft
- 12 Nov
Microsoft's November update for 726 Windows flaws fails to install for some users, The Register reported. Microsoft had not said why.
- 12 Nov
IBM and Microsoft launched a platform promising over 6,000 ready-made AI agents. Gartner found 4% of CIOs implemented plans to adjust roles.
- 11 Nov
Microsoft plans to process Claude inside its EU data boundary by end-2026. Until then it is off by default in the EU.
- 10 Nov
Northern Trust cut client data preparation to three days from two and a half weeks, CIO reported. Staff still check it.
- 9 Nov
Cemex's HR chatbot on Microsoft Copilot Studio serves 800 of 40,000 staff, Microsoft says. One region, nine months after launch.
For your next steering committee
- 1Ask when systems of this kind in your landscape were last patched, and who confirms it.
- 2Ask which finance and ERP accounts can be reached from outside, and how each sign-in is protected.
- 3Ask how long a restore took the last time it was tested.
Issue 01 of the ERP LEADERS brief puts a timeline, the three-number review and six questions on one page. Read issue 01
Welcome back. · Issue 01
