Microsoft Scrambles to Fix Mysterious Outage Crippling Outlook and Teams Worldwide
Ever wondered what happens when the tech giant that pretty much runs your work life decides to take an unexpected coffee break? Well, on November 13, Microsoft dashed hundreds of thousands of emails, video calls, and cloud services right into the digital abyss, leaving users staring at “unexpectedly unavailable” messages like they were part of some bizarre new game. Teams, Outlook, and even AI service Copilot joined the global outage party, sparking a frenzy on Downdetector that looked like the internet’s version of a toddler’s meltdown. The question isn’t just why it happened — it’s how do you recover when your servers keep crashing while you’re still trying to fix them? Microsoft assures us this isn’t a cyber attack, just an “elevated load” that somehow feels like the server equivalent of rush hour on the information superhighway. Hang tight as they juggle isolating infrastructure bits, rerouting traffic, and hoping nothing else breaks while chaos reigns. Curious to see how this digital drama unfolds? LEARN MORE
Microsoft has revealed more details about a major global outage that left hundreds of thousands of customers without emails, video calls and other services.
The tech giant continued to experience disruption on Friday (13 November) as it worked to resolve outages impacting some of its most popular services.
Monitoring website Downdetector first showed a spike in users reporting problems with Microsoft Teams in the UK at around 6.15pm on Thursday. And reports of issues with Outlook alone peaked globally at about 140,000 on Thursday.
Services like Outlook were hit (MANAN VATSYAYANA / AFP via Getty Images)
Affected products included instant messaging service Teams, AI service Copilot, Outlook emails and some aspects of its Cloud services, among others.
In a fresh update, Microsoft said that although it had managed to get servers operating multiple times overnight UK time, those servers had crashed. OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, also reported issues.
“We’re investigating an issue with Microsoft connectors where new connections may be broken and tools are not working as expected,” OpenAI said in a statement on its website.
“We’ll share an update when we know more.”
Microsoft has tried several solutions to mitigate the problems, including isolating parts of its infrastructure and shifting traffic to alternate routes.
“We’ve monitored the status of the changes applied to improve serviceability and confirmed that change is not taking as expected,” the company said.
Meanwhile, Microsoft executive vice-president Charles Lamanna said the outages did not appear to be the result of a cyber attack.
“We regret that today’s outages caused disruptions for our customers, and we are working to address the issue,” he wrote on X.
The tech giant is working on the issues (VCG/VCG via Getty Images)
“We will continue to share more information as soon as we have it, and for now I can confirm that there is no indication this is the result of malicious or cyber activity.”
The firm had attributed to the ongoing outage to ‘elevated load’ on its infrastructure, which is when computer servers are handing a higher volume of data than usual.
Those using Microsoft had ‘unexpectedly unavailable’ messages on servers, which then sends more traffic to the other remaining servers causing strain.
And in a live update to the Microsoft website on Friday morning, the firm said it was ‘seeing positive results’ to their ongoing fix, adding: “We’ll continue to monitor its progress and are working to expand it to servers supporting active regions coming online.
“As of now, we are not aware of any malicious activity that is causing this incident. We will continue to treat this incident with urgency and priority until full resolution.
“Once mitigated, we will provide full details of the root cause, defense-in-depth repair items, and more within a Post-Incident Report.”
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