A prolonged Microsoft outage lasting around 10 hours disrupted core workplace platforms including Outlook and Teams on Thursday, affecting businesses, AI services and government agencies across the globe.
According to outage tracker Downdetector, user complaints in the United States peaked at more than 130,000 around 1 pm ET before easing to over 25,000 later in the evening while disruptions also rippled across Asia-Pacific nations including India, Australia and Japan early Friday.
In a service health update, Microsoft said the disruption stemmed from unexpectedly unavailable servers affecting features tied to Exchange Online its cloud-based email, calendar and messaging platform while non-dependent Microsoft 365 tools remained operational. The company added that recovery efforts were progressing slower than expected as engineers worked to reroute traffic and expand capacity.
Australian Home Affairs and Cyber Security Minister Tony Burke said Microsoft believed the incident was caused by a faulty software update rather than a cyberattack, likening it to the 2024 CrowdStrike malfunction. Australia’s intelligence agency and federal police were among the institutions impacted.
In the United States the House of Representatives confirmed its users were affected while electric truck maker Workhorse Group delayed its quarterly earnings release to November 16 due to operational disruptions. AI firms OpenAI and Anthropic also reported connector issues linked to the Microsoft 365 breakdown.
The incident marks Microsoft’s second major disruption in a month also following an October Azure cloud outage that hit global productivity tools across multiple industries.
