The disruption, which began Thursday, November 12, continued into Friday morning, with the technology giant reporting early signs of recovery but warning that some services remained unstable.
Microsoft first acknowledged the problem shortly before 1 p.m. Eastern Time on Thursday, confirming that it was investigating reports of users experiencing difficulties accessing their online mailboxes and other Microsoft 365 services.
Outage-monitoring platform Downdetector recorded a surge in complaints involving Outlook, Teams and other Microsoft products as users reported difficulties sending emails, accessing accounts and using workplace communication tools.
The disruption affected organizations across multiple countries, highlighting the widespread dependence on Microsoft’s cloud-based services for daily business operations.
Throughout Thursday, Microsoft engineers implemented several recovery measures aimed at stabilizing the affected infrastructure and restoring normal operations.
The company temporarily suspended software deployments, redirected network traffic away from affected systems and restarted servers in an effort to improve performance.
However, the initial measures produced only limited improvements, forcing engineers to explore additional solutions.
By early Friday, Microsoft reported that recovery efforts were progressing in stages, with some affected services showing signs of improvement.
Despite the progress, the company acknowledged that system performance remained inconsistent and that full operational capacity had not yet been restored.
Microsoft said its technical teams were continuing to monitor the infrastructure and implement additional measures to improve server stability and service availability.
Amid growing concerns over the scale of the disruption, Microsoft moved to reassure customers that the outage did not appear to have resulted from a cyberattack.
Charles Lamanna, Microsoft’s Executive Vice President of Copilot, Agents and Platform, apologized to affected customers in a social media statement late Thursday.
He acknowledged the widespread disruption and assured users that engineers were working urgently to resolve the technical problems.
Lamanna also confirmed that the company had found no indication that malicious activity or a cybersecurity incident was responsible for the outage.
His remarks helped address concerns that the disruption might have been linked to a deliberate attack on Microsoft’s global systems.
The outage disrupted email communication, online collaboration and access to cloud-based workplace applications across multiple sectors.
Businesses, government agencies and educational institutions that rely on Microsoft’s digital platforms experienced interruptions to routine operations.
Some users were unable to access their Outlook inboxes, while others reported difficulties using features of Microsoft Teams and related applications.
The problems also affected several services connected to Microsoft 365, demonstrating how technical failures in shared infrastructure can interfere with multiple applications simultaneously.
Microsoft has continued publishing updates through its official Microsoft 365 Status account, providing information about the ongoing recovery process.
The company reported that technical adjustments were gradually improving server stability and capacity, although restoration was proceeding in phases.
Engineers are continuing to assess affected systems, redistribute network traffic and implement further infrastructure repairs.
Microsoft has not announced a definitive timeline for the complete restoration of all affected services.
The incident has once again highlighted the vulnerability of businesses and institutions that depend heavily on centralized cloud platforms for communication and essential operations.
As recovery efforts continue, Microsoft says restoring reliable access to its services remains its immediate priority, while customers await confirmation that the global disruption has been fully resolved.
