Microsoft Outage Hits 74 Countries, Disrupting Government and Business Services
Microsoft's global outage disrupts Outlook, Teams and Copilot across 74 countries, affecting government services, visa processing and hospital communications.
ERBIL (Kurdistan24) - A widespread outage of Microsoft's cloud services disrupted email, workplace communication and public services across the world on Thursday, Nov. 12, affecting users in 74 countries and territories as the company struggled to restore normal access.
Outlook was among the worst-affected products, while users also reported problems with Microsoft Teams and the company's artificial intelligence assistant, Copilot.
Downdetector, which monitors reports submitted by users, said complaints spread across 74 countries and territories within an hour, reflecting the international reach of the disruption rather than a confirmed failure of every Microsoft service in those locations.
According to Agence France-Presse (AFP), businesses and government agencies were unable to use Outlook normally, leaving staff struggling to send and receive messages through a platform central to their daily operations.
Microsoft Searches for a Fix
Microsoft initially investigated reports of connectivity problems in the Americas before acknowledging that Microsoft 365 users in other regions could also be affected.
The company identified unusually high demand on parts of its infrastructure, later explaining that some servers had become unexpectedly unavailable and had shifted additional work onto those that remained operational.
Engineers attempted to restart affected servers and redirect traffic through other infrastructure. Some systems began recovering, but the restoration efforts encountered further problems when servers failed to respond reliably under renewed demand.
"We've monitored the status of the changes applied to improve serviceability and confirmed they're not taking as expected," Microsoft said in an update reported by AFP.
The company said it was pursuing alternative methods to increase capacity. It reported limited recovery as users gradually reconnected, without providing a definite timetable for full restoration.
Downdetector said reports concerning Outlook rose to more than 2,000 times their usual level at one stage. Its map showed complaints from the Americas and parts of Europe, Asia and Africa. Although some reports later declined, that did not mean every affected service had recovered. The tracker relies on user complaints and cannot establish how many individuals were actually affected.
Public Services Disrupted
The consequences extended beyond private workplaces. In New Zealand, government agencies and businesses encountered disruptions that forced some operations onto manual procedures.
The country's foreign ministry said the outage had affected its ability to receive email, including at embassies, consulates and representative offices overseas. That disruption complicated communications not only within New Zealand but also across its diplomatic network.
Immigration New Zealand announced that it had paused processing all visa applications because of the disruption. The agency also said customers could not submit applications through its enhanced online platform while the affected services remained unavailable.
In Canada, Unity Health Toronto declared a "Code Grey," an alert associated with infrastructure failure, after staff experienced problems sending and receiving email.
The hospital network emphasized that clinical services had not been interrupted. "Our hospitals remain safe and open to provide care," it said, advising patients with urgent appointment questions to telephone their clinics through the hospital's main line.
No Evidence of a Cyberattack
Australia's Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke said he had received a briefing on the disruption and that Microsoft did not, at that stage, believe it was dealing with a cyberattack.
Burke likened the apparent technical problem to the type of software failure seen during the earlier CrowdStrike incident, but the comparison did not establish that the outages had the same cause.
Microsoft continued analyzing diagnostic information and testing recovery options as the failure affected organizations dependent on its cloud-based services.
The incident highlighted how problems within a widely used technology provider can interrupt routine government administration, healthcare communication and business operations across multiple countries, even when essential services remain available.