A widespread Microsoft 365 outage is disrupting email, communications and other cloud services Thursday, November 12, with Microsoft confirming that a large number of its servers have unexpectedly become unavailable.
The disruption is affecting multiple Microsoft 365 services, potentially preventing businesses and individual users from accessing essential applications.
Microsoft has classified the incident as a service degradation and confirmed that users may be unable to connect to several of its cloud-based services.
Multiple Microsoft Services Affected
According to Microsoft’s official service health advisory, potentially affected services include:
- Exchange Online: Business email services, including Outlook.
- Microsoft Teams: Workplace messaging, meetings and collaboration.
- SharePoint Online: Cloud-based document storage and collaboration.
- Microsoft 365 Copilot: Microsoft’s AI-powered productivity assistant.
- Microsoft Defender XDR: Microsoft’s extended detection and response security platform.
Not all users are necessarily affected, and the extent of disruptions may vary by service and organization.
Microsoft Identifies Unexpected Server Failures
In its latest update, Microsoft revealed that the disruption is not being caused by an overall increase in traffic.
Instead, the company determined that a large number of servers have unexpectedly become unavailable, forcing additional demand onto the remaining operational infrastructure.
Microsoft engineers are investigating why the servers became unavailable while working to safely restore them to service.
The company also confirmed that it has temporarily suspended deployments and configuration changes as a precaution while investigating whether recent changes may have contributed to the outage.
Microsoft said it is aggressively pursuing available options to reduce the impact on customers.
Businesses Face Disruptions
The outage is particularly concerning for businesses and organizations that rely on Microsoft 365 for daily operations, including email, internal communications, document sharing and cybersecurity services.
Because multiple services are affected, some organizations may experience disruptions across several parts of their operations simultaneously.
Users experiencing connection problems are advised to avoid making unnecessary changes to their devices or email configurations while Microsoft works to resolve the underlying infrastructure issues.
When Will Microsoft 365 Be Restored?
Microsoft has not provided an estimated time for full restoration.
The company says it is continuing to investigate the server availability problems while working to reduce the impact and restore affected services.
Microsoft’s next official status update is scheduled for 4:00 p.m. Central Time Thursday, November 12.
Businesses using Microsoft 365 can monitor developments through the Microsoft 365 Admin Center or Microsoft’s public service status page.
This is a developing story. Additional updates will be provided as Microsoft releases more information.
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