A worldwide Microsoft outage continues into a second day, leaving many without email access and others reporting issues with Teams and other products.
"We are deeply sorry for the disruption this incident has caused our customers and partners," Microsoft stated in a post on X. "We know the trust they place in our services and take that responsibility extremely seriously."
Microsoft also confirmed that the outage was not due to a cyberattack and added that it has "addressed the underlying issue and continue to restore service to remaining customers and regions."
As of 11 a.m. ET, the outage continues. Some users may still have issues accessing their accounts or receiving emails, the company said.
Downdetector received 28 reports of issues with Outlook, Microsoft's email service, as of 1:03 p.m. ET. The number is significantly lower than the 130,000 reported when the outage started on Thursday. Microsoft 365, meanwhile, reported 1,586 around the same time, down from a peak of nearly 50,000.
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A man looks at his phone as he passes by the Microsoft stand at the Mobile World Congress trade show in Barcelona, Spain, March 3, 2025.
Here's what to know about the Microsoft outage.
What caused the outage?
Microsoft stated that an investigation into the outage is ongoing.
"This was a technical issue not related to cyber or AI / agents," Microsoft stated in a social media post on Friday, Nov. 13, at 1:05 p.m. ET. "The incident was introduced by an issue during an earlier network capacity upgrade that surfaced following a recent network change."
Microsoft also stated it would provide a full post-incident report on the outage once it completed its review.
Microsoft still faces 'Service degradation'
Microsoft users may still face issues while using Microsoft 365 services, but the company is "observing signs of sustained recovery throughout the affected environment," according to the status page.
Microsoft also warned that people who access the following services through a web browser may still be impacted by the outage:
OneDrive
OneNote
Microsoft To Do
Teams
However, while it is seeing sustained recovery, other Microsoft 365 services may still face issues.
The outages have been ongoing for over 24 hours. Microsoft first announced that users were experiencing issues with Microsoft 365 on Thursday, Nov. 12, at 10:40 a.m. ET.
More than a dozen Microsoft services still disrupted
Multiple Microsoft services were still inaccessible or disrupted at 11:30, with its health status page listing about 20 products experiencing "service degradation."
Among them were names office workers will recognize. Email access seemed to remain a big pain point, and Microsoft said some Outlook users still could not access their mailboxes on the web or desktop app, while email delivery was also delayed.
The 365 admin center, where Microsoft ironically pointed people seeking more information, also still had loading and access issues. Some users remained unable to access recent documents using 365 apps, and cloud updates were also delayed.
Some Copilot users couldn't load chats or receive responses in the web or desktop apps, and those who could chat with the AI couldn't access email, calendars, and files through it.
Defender also continued to be impacted: you may have noticed a warning popping up while trying to click through external links through a Microsoft service. And, if you've been trying to send SharePoint files outside your organization, you may have run into a similar issue.
Teams remained largely unaffected.
Other listed services included Microsoft 365 Education, Microsoft Fabric, Microsoft Graph, Intune, Planner, Power Apps, Purview, To Do, Power BI and Universal Print.
How many people are affected by the Microsoft outage?
Microsoft has not released information about the full extent of the outages. More than 430 million people use its 365 apps, according to its website, but Downdetector only reflects outages directly reported to them by users, not all outages.
Downdetector said in a Nov. 12 post that reports rolled in from 74 countries within the hour after disruptions began Thursday afternoon. Microsoft said issues first arose around 11:17 a.m. ET and by 1:25 p.m., reports of outages across five products were rolling in to Downdetector at 19,650 a minute.
"Outlook reports alone peaked at more than 2,000 times their normal level," it said.
A deluge of reports came from not only the U.S., but also the UK, India and New Zealand on Thursday.
Microsoft says no sign of 'malicious' cyber activity
Facing speculation about possible hacks or security breaches, Microsoft has said it does not believe anything "malicious" is behind the outages.
"At this time, we have no evidence of malicious activity associated with this incident. We will continue to treat this with urgency until full mitigation, and we will share a full Post-Incident Report with root cause and defense-in-depth actions after mitigation is complete," it said in a status page update just before 10 a.m.
Charles Lamanna, an executive at Microsoft, said the same in a post from his confirmed X account Thursday night, saying "...for now I can confirm that there is no indication this is the result of malicious or cyber activity."
Contributing: Mary Walrath-Holdridge, Fernando Ceravantes, Thao Nguyen, Mike Snider, USA Today
