Microsoft 365 outage: what we know (updated 3:30pm AEDT, Friday 13 November)
If Outlook, Teams or SharePoint have been playing up today, it isn’t your computer or your network. Microsoft is dealing with a major worldwide outage.
What’s happening
Microsoft first flagged the incident at 18:10 UTC, which is 5:10am AEDT today. The company has confirmed that users worldwide may be affected. Services on Microsoft’s affected list include Exchange Online (Outlook email), Teams, SharePoint Online, Microsoft 365 Copilot, Defender XDR, Planner, To Do and Intune. At time of writing most T4B clients are reporting that Teams is working, but this may not be the case for all M365 users.
What caused it
Microsoft says a number of its servers unexpectedly dropped offline, which overloaded the ones still running. No root cause has been confirmed yet, and Microsoft has disclosed no evidence of a cyberattack.
Variety
Where things stand
Recovery has been slow. Servers Microsoft brought back online have in some cases fallen over again once traffic reached them. The latest update we’ve seen has Microsoft adding infrastructure capacity to support regions as they come back online. There is still no confirmed time for full restoration.
What you should do
* Don’t reinstall Outlook, reset passwords or change settings. The fault is at Microsoft’s end.
* Email sent to you during an outage like this is normally queued and delivered once service returns.
* Use the phone for anything urgent.
* Be wary of emails or calls offering to “fix” the outage. Scammers move quickly on events like this.
* As service returns, expect it to be patchy for a while as apps reconnect.
Our helpdesk is monitoring Microsoft’s updates and we’ll post again when there’s meaningful news.