Microsoft 365 Outage Disrupts Outlook and Teams Users Worldwide
Microsoft 365 Outage Disrupts Outlook and Teams Users Worldwide. Microsoft is working to restore services following a major global outage that disrupted Outlook, Teams and several other Microsoft 365 applications, affecting businesses and organisations across multiple regions, including South Africa.
The disruption began on Thursday, 12 November, and continued into Friday, leaving users unable to access some workplace communication and productivity tools.
Microsoft initially attributed the incident to elevated infrastructure loads but later clarified that increased user traffic was not responsible. Instead, several servers had unexpectedly become unavailable.
The company identified a problem involving a process on affected servers responsible for establishing secure connections. The process became overwhelmed, preventing the servers from processing requests.
Microsoft said it was preparing a configuration change to address the issue. Its recovery efforts also included restarting affected infrastructure, reversing a recent network configuration change and redirecting connections to alternative servers.
The disruption primarily affected Exchange Online, the cloud-based email service that supports Outlook. Other affected applications included Microsoft Teams, SharePoint Online, Copilot, Planner, To Do and certain Microsoft Defender functions.
However, not all services were unavailable. Microsoft said features that did not rely on Exchange Online continued operating, while Teams messaging and online meetings remained largely functional.
Restoring services proved challenging, as some servers became unresponsive again after being brought back online and receiving redirected traffic.
Microsoft subsequently introduced traffic management measures and continued gradually restoring affected infrastructure.
The company also said it had found no indication that the incident was linked to malicious or cyber activity.
The scale of the disruption was reflected in reports submitted to outage-tracking platform Downdetector, which recorded nearly 130,000 complaints relating to Microsoft 365 problems across 74 countries at the height of the outage.
Microsoft apologised to affected users and said it would provide further information as its investigation progressed. The company also indicated that a fuller post-incident report would outline the root cause and measures intended to prevent a recurrence.
