Global Microsoft outage hits 74 countries as Microsoft reports slight progress

How the outage unfolded

The disruption began on 12 November and spread within hours to other regions, including Europe and Poland. Downdetector recorded close to 130,000 simultaneous reports about email problems at the peak, and reports reached the monitoring service from 74 countries and territories within about an hour. Many firms finished work early on 12 November, and some were still unable to operate normally on the morning of 13 November. The sequence of key steps is shown below.

Services and organizations affected

Outlook, Exchange Online and Microsoft Teams were among the most affected tools, and Teams lost the ability to schedule meetings and start some chats. Other affected products include OneDrive, SharePoint Online, Planner, To Do, Microsoft Copilot, Defender XDR and Purview. The outage reached banks, financial institutions, courts and government bodies. In Australia, companies could not print invoices, and some schools could not run online lessons on 13 November.

mBank told customers that the outage was causing serious difficulties sending and receiving email. The bank apologized for the inconvenience, asked clients to use other channels, and said its helplines and in-app chat were still working. It promised to report when the failure ended.

Microsoft's response

Microsoft said on 13 November that its recovery work had made small progress so far and that it was still working to remove the outage. The company conceded that its steps had partly improved matters in some regions without producing a lasting effect. Engineers were running configuration work in parallel and rerouting network traffic, but earlier attempts to restart servers had led to services freezing again. A statement posted on X after 10:00 Polish time said the email time limit had been extended to 48 hours to help secure delayed messages.

“At this stage, we have recorded slight progress.”

Cyberattack ruled out

Microsoft said it had no knowledge of any malicious activity causing the outage and would keep treating the incident as a top priority until it was fully resolved. Australia's minister for home affairs and cybersecurity, Tony Burke, said that after consulting the company, hackers and a hostile cyberattack had been ruled out at this stage. Microsoft has not yet published the official root cause. The outage has been compared with the 2024 global failure caused by a faulty CrowdStrike software update, which paralyzed airports, banks and hospitals. Microsoft promised a post-incident report with root-cause details once the situation was under control.

Poland's digital minister calls for open source

Krzysztof Gawkowski, Poland's deputy prime minister and minister of digital affairs, commented on X that the outage exposed the risks of depending on a few global providers. He argued that diversifying suppliers and relying on open solutions could limit such risks.

“This is a clear illustration of problems with digital dependence on global corporations.”

His ministry is working on deploying open-source solutions in public administration, and a competition for pilot open-source deployments in local government units will open soon. Verified solutions would later be shared centrally across the administration. Gawkowski said the approach would bring large savings and greater digital sovereignty.