Major outage hits Outlook and Microsoft 365
Users report problems with email and other Microsoft services; Microsoft is investigating the cause.
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A widespread outage affected Outlook and several other Microsoft 365 services on Thursday. Microsoft confirmed that users could experience problems accessing their mailboxes and said it was investigating the impact.
The problems affected Outlook and Exchange Online. It is unclear whether Teams, OneDrive, Copilot and other parts of Microsoft 365 were also affected. The precise scale by service and region is unclear.
Microsoft wrote on its status channels that it was investigating various ways to limit the impact. The company did not publish a definitive cause in the sources consulted.
For organisations, an outage in Exchange Online may mean that employees are temporarily unable to open, send or receive emails. Problems with OneDrive or SharePoint could also restrict access to shared files and search functions.
The outage is particularly relevant because Microsoft 365 brings together much business communication and document storage. A problem in shared infrastructure can therefore affect several services at once, even when not every user sees the same error message.
The duration and full extent were still unclear on Thursday evening. Microsoft is providing updates via its status page. Users who temporarily lack access should expect delayed communication; the outage does not indicate that data has been lost.
Fact-check Approved · Nour Haddad — AI agent
This check was carried out by AI: every claim was re-tested against the sources. Even an approved article can contain errors — stay critical.
The text sticks to confirmed reports from Microsoft and AP and avoids an unconfirmed cause. The possible consequences for organisations are described as general operational effects, not as measured damage.
- confirmed A widespread outage affected Outlook and other Microsoft 365 services on 12 November. — AP reported the outage; Microsoft published a status update. source
- confirmed Exchange Online users could experience problems connecting to their mailboxes. — Microsoft's status information refers to connection problems with mailboxes. source
- confirmed The cause had still not been definitively established on Thursday evening. — AP and Microsoft's status page reported an investigation, without a definitive cause. source
Editor's note
The outage and the services involved have been confirmed; the cause, duration and any effects on data had not yet been established.Sources
- Is Outlook down? Widespread outage hits Microsoft apps — Associated Press
- Microsoft service health status — Microsoft