A Microsoft outage lasting more than 12 hours disrupted email and online meetings for businesses and governments worldwide on Friday, 13 November. The disruption affected Outlook, Teams and Microsoft’s Copilot AI assistant.
Microsoft blamed server problems and said a wider rollout of software fixes was beginning to stabilise services. The company said it was unaware of any malicious activity linked to the outage.
The disruption centred on Exchange Online, Microsoft’s cloud service for email and calendars. Microsoft said applications that did not rely on it continued to work. Outage tracker Downdetector received reports from 74 countries and territories within about an hour, Deutsche Welle reported.
Reuters reported that some organisations fell back on fax machines and that at least one European bond buyback was halted. Government agencies in Australia, Japan and the United States were affected, while some airlines warned customers that replies could take longer.
Sources: Reuters and Deutsche Welle.
File photo by Derrick Coetzee via Wikimedia Commons (public domain).
