Hyderabad: Microsoft restored its services worldwide on Saturday after a major outage disrupted several applications for more than 36 hours. The company announced that Outlook, Microsoft Teams, Copilot and other Microsoft 365 applications had become available again after corrective measures.
However, Microsoft continued monitoring its systems to ensure stability. The company also tracked the status of delayed email messages and worked to clear pending communications.
The disruption began on Thursday, November 12, when users reported problems accessing their Exchange Online mailboxes. Subsequently, the outage affected several Microsoft services, including Outlook, Teams, Copilot, SharePoint, Planner and To Do.
Most basic messaging and online meeting functions in Teams continued to operate during the disruption. However, users faced difficulties with Exchange-dependent features, particularly calendar access and meeting scheduling.
Copilot also experienced problems. Users struggled to open chats and retrieve information linked to emails, calendars and files. As a result, the disruption affected several functions that depend on Microsoft’s connected services.
Microsoft traced the incident to a technical issue involving an earlier expansion of network capacity. The problem emerged after the company carried out another network change recently. However, Microsoft ruled out a cyberattack or an AI agent as the cause.
Microsoft services restored through phased recovery process
Microsoft said its technical teams restored the affected services in stages rather than bringing everything back online simultaneously. The company checked system stability at each stage before making individual services available again.
Meanwhile, Microsoft extended the email timeout period to 48 hours. This measure aimed to give delayed messages additional time to reach recipients and allow pending emails to complete processing.
The company apologised to users and partners for the inconvenience caused by the disruption. It also said it would publish a detailed incident report after completing its investigation.
The outage highlighted the dependence of businesses and organisations on cloud-based technology platforms. When major services become unavailable, disruptions can affect communication, meetings, scheduling and access to essential information.
Furthermore, the incident renewed concerns about business continuity during major technology outages. Organisations may need alternative arrangements to maintain operations when widely used cloud platforms experience service interruptions.
