Technology · Apps & Software

Microsoft 365 Outage Hits Outlook, Teams and Copilot Across US, Japan

A global Microsoft 365 outage knocked out Outlook, Teams and Copilot for users in the US, Japan and Singapore. Microsoft blamed unavailable servers and said services were restored after two days, as companies counted the cost and one firm delayed its earnings report.

By Elena Vance

November 15, 20262 min read

Microsoft 365 Outage Hits Outlook, Teams and Copilot Across US, Japan

Japan's fax machines save the day as Microsoft 365 goes down, one tech headline said, after a global outage of Microsoft's workplace services began on Thursday, November 12. Outlook, Teams and the Copilot AI assistant all suffered what Microsoft called "connectivity problems".

Tens of thousands of users were reportedly affected. Reports of Outlook problems peaked at nearly 140,000 around 18:00 GMT on Thursday, according to the monitoring site Downdetector.

What broke

The disruption hit Microsoft 365, the subscription service many businesses use for email, chat, video meetings and file storage. Users could be unable to view certain files or details in their calendar apps, Microsoft said. Copilot may also have failed to work properly.

Messaging and online meetings were largely functional, the company added.

Users in the US, Japan and Singapore all reported disruption. For international organizations, the platform is a main way of connecting staff around the world.

Microsoft's explanation

Microsoft said in a series of posts on X that a number of servers were "unexpectedly unavailable", which strained its remaining systems. It said it was seeing "positive results" from its repair work and was rushing to fix the problem.

The company also warned that restored services "can become unresponsive again", and that customers "in any region" could be affected. A spokesperson said: "We appreciate our customers' patience while we work to restore services as soon as possible."

There was no indication the outage was caused by a cyber-attack, according to reports.

Knock-on effects

The problems spread beyond Microsoft's own products. AI companies Anthropic and OpenAI, which work with Microsoft's systems, were also hit. OpenAI said it was investigating an issue affecting its connections to Microsoft's services, which left some tools not working as expected.

Electric truck maker Workhorse Group was due to report third-quarter results on November 12. It rescheduled the report to November 16, citing business disruption from the global Microsoft outage.

The outage entered a second day on Saturday, November 14, with Outlook and Teams still struggling to recover. Australian business owners described being left counting the cost of the disruption. Later coverage reported that Microsoft apologized, disclosed the cause of the meltdown and said services were fully restored.

It was not the first problem in recent weeks. Microsoft reported an outage of its Azure cloud platform last month that affected its productivity tools and companies worldwide.