It’s been approximately 18 hours since Microsoft acknowledged Microsoft 365 issues worldwide, and the services are still struggling to stay online. Now, the company’s Copilot EVP has confirmed that there have been no signs of a cyberattack, and Microsoft deeply “regrets” the error, as millions of users are alarmed over the massive outage.
“We regret that today’s outages caused disruptions for our customers, and we are working to address the issue,” Charles Lamanna, Microsoft’s executive vice president of Copilot, Agents, and Platform, said in a statement.
Microsoft’s apology obviously doesn’t make anybody feel better, and people have every reason to be upset. The outage started at around 8:30 AM PT and is Microsoft’s worst in its own history. Many users are still unable to access Outlook emails, text their colleagues in Teams, or even use Copilot.
With an outage this widespread and long-lasting, you might be wondering if Microsoft was hacked. But don’t worry, there’s no indication of a cyberattack so far.
“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,” Microsoft noted in a statement.
Based on everything we’ve seen or heard from the company, its executives, or former executives, it looks like today’s outage was entirely Redmond’s fault.
Microsoft 365 outage affects millions, as services are now slowly coming back
The outage began in the early morning of November 12, and it was later acknowledged by Microsoft. At 11:30 AM PT, Microsoft confirmed the outage was mostly caused by its own overloaded servers and noted that some servers were suddenly “unavailable.” That led the company to route traffic to other servers, which put strain on the remaining infrastructure.
Microsoft eventually rolled out a configuration change, which helped make most products like Outlook and Teams stable by 3 PM PT. But even then, the company told us that the recovery was not to the extent it “expected,” which means hundreds or thousands of users were still having problems.
I’ve been following Microsoft’s outage since it started, and here’s everything the company has posted so far on its health center:
| Date and time (PT) | Microsoft’s statement on the status of Microsoft 365 services |
|---|---|
| November 12, 8:17 a.m. | At this hour, Microsoft confirmed Exchange Online was having issues. |
| November 12, 10:27 a.m. | Microsoft reported issues across multiple regions and said Teams, SharePoint, and Copilot could be affected as well. But we personally experienced issues with Outlook or Teams at the same time as the Exchange outage. |
| November 12, 10:58 a.m. | Microsoft admitted it’s experiencing a critical outage, and it started moving traffic away from affected infrastructure. It also restarted its own servers to reduce load. |
| November 12, 11:30 a.m. | Microsoft said issues were caused by servers becoming unavailable, which put pressure on the remaining infrastructure. |
| November 12, 11:43 a.m. | Microsoft began testing a configuration change. |
| November 12, 12:56 p.m. | Microsoft began applying a health check to restore some servers. |
| November 12, 2:00 p.m. | Microsoft said it’s been struggling to recover the service, even after all fixes were deployed. |
| November 12, 2:57 p.m. | Microsoft observed limited recovery in some regions. |
| November 12, 3:59 p.m. | Microsoft said restored servers could become unresponsive again. |
| November 12, 11:25 p.m. | Microsoft confirmed servers are now more stable, as it applied a patch across its infrastructure. |
| November 13, 1:03 a.m. (Last update) |
Microsoft said the Microsoft 365 outage appeared to be stabilizing, but capacity had not returned to normal. |
Even as Microsoft argues it’ll be careful going forward, I strongly recommend everyone claim “credit” and reach out to Microsoft support, as a several-hour-long outage could be covered under the SLA (service level agreement).
Microsoft 365 is slowly recovering
I can confirm that most of Microsoft’s services, such as Teams and Copilot, are now back online, but I’m still struggling to use Outlook. For example, when I try to open a shared mailbox in New Outlook for Windows, I am told that I do not have permission.
Of course, I do, as I’m the admin of the organization. But the same email shows up in my Outlook for Android. For my second Outlook account, I am still seeing the “Your request can’t be completed right now” error in New Outlook for Windows.
Based on my experience, I don’t think Microsoft 365 or Outlook are stable yet, and that explains why Microsoft hasn’t officially declared the outage “resolved” yet, even as we’re approaching the 19th hour.
This is a terrible day for Microsoft and those who rely on the Windows giant.
