A significant Microsoft outage disrupted global access to essential services such as Outlook, Teams and Exchange Online, leaving businesses, government agencies and individual users grappling with the consequences. Beginning early Monday morning, the outage has escalated, with over 5,000 users reporting issues by 12 p.m. Eastern Time on Downdetector. Microsoft said that the issues have now been resolved. At 4 a.m. ET on Monday, the company acknowledged the issue, stating that “we’re investigating an issue impacting users attempting to access Exchange Online or functionality within Microsoft Teams calendar. For more information, please refer to MO941162 in the admin center.” Teams, Outlook, Exchange, SharePoint—All Impacted The outage has hit Microsoft Teams’ calendar functionality, Outlook email services, Exchange Online and SharePoint—tools fundamental to the workflows of millions, as reported by BleepingComputer. Major urban centers like New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and Tampa are experiencing notable service disruptions. While some users report partial functionality, such as receiving emails without the ability to download attachments, others remain completely offline. For businesses, this outage has a cascading effect. Teams meetings are delayed, project timelines are disrupted and employees must scramble for alternative communication methods. In a world increasingly reliant on digital tools for productivity, interruptions like this underscore how dependent we have become on seamless cloud services. This incident follows a notable July 2024 disruption linked to CrowdStrike’s software, which caused chaos across industries including healthcare and aviation. That event culminated in Delta Air Lines filing lawsuits against CrowdStrike and Microsoft, alleging negligence and damages stemming from the outage. These recurring incidents underscore the vulnerability of even the most sophisticated cloud infrastructures. Root Cause and Microsoft’s Response According to Microsoft, a recent system change caused the outage. The company has deployed a dual-pronged approach to address the issue. A global rollout of a comprehensive fix and manual restarts of affected machines to expedite service restoration. While Microsoft claims that over 90% of impacted environments have received the fix, reports from users indicate ongoing issues. Nov. 25, 11:51 a.m. — Microsoft reports that its fix has reached approximately 98% of affected environments, and targeted restarts are being performed as quickly as possible for mitigation purposes. Nov. 25, 7:22 p.m. — Microsoft reports that it is continuing in the recovery process and issues will be resolved within the next three hours. Nov. 25, 10:56 — Microsoft says it has restored functionalities for all impacted services excluding Outlook on the web. Nov. 26, 12:41 a.m. — Microsoft has been unable to resolve lingering issues with Outlook on the web that is affecting some users, including delays in mail queueing causing over-long delivery times. Nov. 26, 3:07 p.m. — Microsoft is reporting on X that, after an extended period of monitoring, they have confirmed that the issues have been resolved. The service status page for Microsoft 365 reflects this.
Fields of view
