Microsoft outage today: Is it fixed yet? - Geo News

Microsoft’s global outage entered its second day on Friday, November 13, leaving millions of users without access to Outlook email, Teams, and other workplace tools, with the company reporting “encouraging recovery progress.”

The disruption, which started Thursday afternoon, crippled Exchange Online, the engine powering Microsoft’s email infrastructure. Microsoft said it found no evidence of malicious or cyber activity behind the failure.

Incident reports had been received from 74 countries and territories within an hour's time, according to Downdetector. Improvement was first seen in the Asia Pacific area, with Japan being called "comparatively more stable," followed by Europe and North America. Microsoft has advised that some users may yet experience "intermittent issues," and has increased the email timeout period to 48 hours.

The consequences were widespread. The U.S. House of Representatives reported that its engineers were collaborating with Microsoft, while cities throughout the country have reported email issues. 

The National Health Service of Britain has stated that the outage could lead to some patients failing to receive prescribed medicines, while police stations in the U.K. have advised people to report crimes by phone and not on the internet.

Philippine courts and the European Court of Human Rights mentioned possible delays. German company Deutsche Bahn has experienced "severe sluggishness" in communication internally, while Canada's VIA Rail has informed that passengers might not get email updates regarding their journeys. 

Australian courts, schools, and governmental services were affected by the outage, as were Hong Kong's banks.

AI firms were also hit. OpenAI reported issues with Microsoft connectors affecting ChatGPT, and Anthropic said Claude’s Microsoft 365 tools were failing before developing a fix.