Microsoft Outlook down for nearly 22 hours: When will services return?
Microsoft‘s massive global outage has entered its second day, with Outlook, Teams, Copilot and several Microsoft 365 services facing disruptions across the world. The trouble began on Thursday, November 12, and has continued for nearly 22 hours as of 7:45 PM IST on Friday, November 13. Millions of people depend on these applications for emails, meetings and everyday office work, making the prolonged disruption particularly difficult for businesses.
The outage has spread across 74 countries and territories, according to reports collected by Downdetector. What started as problems accessing Outlook mailboxes in the Americas soon affected users in Europe and Asia, including India. Airlines, government departments and technology companies have reported problems. Microsoft says its engineers are restoring servers and working to improve service stability, with some users beginning to see improvements.
:
When did the Microsoft Outlook outage start?
Microsoft’s service health records place the beginning of the major disruption at approximately 9:47 PM IST on November 12, equivalent to 4:17 PM UTC.
By late Thursday, Downdetector had recorded nearly 1.3 lakh reports of Outlook problems in the United States alone. Users complained about inaccessible inboxes, delayed emails and failed sign-ins.
The disruption has continued into Friday evening, though recovery has varied between regions and services.
:
Which companies and government services were affected?
In India, IndiGo and Akasa Air reported problems with email-based customer support. IndiGo advised passengers to use its website, mobile application and 6E Skai chatbot for urgent assistance. Air India said its operations remained unaffected and that it had rerouted email traffic.
OpenAI and Anthropic reported problems with their Microsoft 365 connectors, affecting users who connect workplace information to their AI tools.
The disruption reached government services too. Singapore reported problems with government email, Japan acknowledged an impact on government IT infrastructure, and the Philippines’ Supreme Court reported disruption to some operations.
:
Was Xbox affected by the Microsoft outage?
Some Xbox-related user complaints have appeared on outage trackers during the wider Microsoft disruption. However, there is no confirmed widespread Xbox network outage directly linked to the Microsoft 365 incident.
Xbox services operate separately from Outlook and Exchange Online, and Xbox service monitoring has indicated normal operations. Gamers should check the official Xbox status page before assuming that sign-in or multiplayer problems are connected to the email outage.
:
What has Microsoft said about the outage?
Microsoft identified problems involving servers becoming unavailable and placing additional strain on the remaining infrastructure. Some restarted servers stopped responding again when user traffic returned.
The company said, “We’re aggressively pursuing all pathways to reduce impact.”
Engineers have been redistributing traffic, restarting affected systems and testing changes to restore access. Microsoft has reported improving availability in some regions, but has not confirmed complete recovery.
Microsoft executive Charles Lamanna said there was no indication that malicious or cyber activity caused the incident.
For users still unable to access their accounts, the company has not provided a confirmed time for complete restoration. Email delivery may remain delayed even after access begins returning.