Microsoft Outlook and 365 services restored after 20-hour outage hit 74 countries

Microsoft's email service Outlook and the servers of Microsoft 365 went down suddenly late on November 12. About 20 hours later, the company said service had resumed in many places. It announced this in a post on its official X account.

The disruption affected millions of users worldwide, and many companies could start work only late. The Microsoft cloud problem hit 74 countries, including India, other Asian countries, Australia, New Zealand, North America and some countries in Europe. Businesses in many countries run on Microsoft's cloud service, so the communication link broke, it was said. The Office 365 fault had shut email down completely. Fintech companies were hit hardest. Losses running into crores of rupees are feared.

A post from Microsoft 365 Status said recovery was progressing in the affected areas. It said improvement was greater in North America, was holding across large parts of Europe, and there were good signs of recovery in Asia Pacific. According to the company, some users may still face intermittent access problems or delays in receiving email, as work continues on resolving the remaining affected infrastructure. The company is focused on keeping the restored infrastructure stable, finishing work in the remaining areas, and reducing the email delay queues and backlog. For this, service stability is being checked across all connection methods. A more detailed update has been issued in the Microsoft 365 Admin Center under the reference MO1550821.

In a post from its main account, Microsoft expressed deep regret to customers and partners. It said it knows their trust and takes this responsibility extremely seriously. The company said this was a technical fault with no connection to a cyberattack or to AI and agents. The problem arose during an earlier network capacity upgrade and surfaced after a recent network change. The company said it has fixed the underlying problem and is continuing to restore service for the remaining customers and regions.

Microsoft said demand was very high, so services were restored gradually and stability was checked at each stage. This took longer, but kept the restoration stable. The company said it will release a full report on the incident once its review is complete.