Microsoft outage drags on for hours, disrupting Outlook, Teams for thousands, including Singapore users - CNA

Microsoft attributed the connectivity issues to "elevated load" on its infrastructure across multiple regions.

Microsoft logo in this illustration taken November 6, 2026. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration

Microsoft Outlook suffered a major outage across the world Thursday (Nov 12), with tens of thousands of users struggling to access their email as the company said it was working "aggressively" to reduce the impact.

The disruption, which Microsoft attributed to "elevated load" on its infrastructure, dragged on for much of the US workday and also affected other company products such as Teams and the AI assistant Copilot.

The disruption went global within a span of an hour, knocking out Microsoft products in 74 countries and territories, outage tracker Downdetector reported.

A map posted by Downdetector on X showed the outage affected users across the Americas, and parts of Europe, Asia and Africa.

CNA Games Guess Word Crack the word, one row at a time Buzzword Create words using the given letters Mini Sudoku Tiny puzzle, mighty brain teaser Mini Crossword Small grid, big challenge Word Search Spot as many words as you can Show More Show Less As of 6pm ET (Friday, 7am, Singapore time), Microsoft said it was still working to return affected servers to service, and had observed limited recovery as users gradually reconnected. 

Reports of Outlook problems peaked at 138,058 around 1pm ET and had fallen to around 34,490 by evening, according to Downdetector. Outage reports have since declined, with about 37,000 users reporting experiencing issues with Outlook as of 6pm ET.

Thousands of users also reported issues with Teams and Copilot, according to Downdetector.

In Singapore, the outage tracker recorded 250 reports for Microsoft Outlook at 7.05am on Friday. There were also 152 reports for Microsoft 365.

Microsoft initially said it was investigating outage reports "in the Americas," but later confirmed that the issue apparently affected "Microsoft 365 service connectivity for users in any region."

Microsoft 365 is the company's cloud-based subscription service that includes popular applications such as Outlook and Teams.

"We've determined a portion of infrastructure is experiencing elevated load across multiple regions, which is likely contributing to the connectivity errors," the company wrote on X.

"We're aggressively pursuing all pathways to reduce impact," it added.

"We've paused all deployments, we're moving additional traffic off the affected infrastructure, and we're restarting affected servers to return them to service."

As the outage dragged on for hours, Microsoft posted a series of updates on X, detailing continued but unsuccessful efforts to restore full service.

In one update shortly after 6pm ET, Microsoft said it was "observing limited recovery" as it sought to route user traffic away from affected servers.

"As capacity is restored, users may experience a gradual recovery as their clients reconnect," the company added.OpenAI said it was investigating an issue with Microsoft connectors in which new connections may be broken and tools are not working as expected.

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

Microsoft last month reported an outage of its Azure cloud platform that impacted the tech giant's suite of productivity software, and a range of industries worldwide.

Electric truck maker Workhorse Group, which was expected to report third-quarter results on Nov 12, rescheduled it to Nov 16 citing business disruptions caused by the global Microsoft outage.

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