An outage affecting US-based Microsoft 365 has made email access through Outlook and other services unavailable, also affecting Teams and SharePoint. Recovery work is under way, but there is still no clear prospect of a full recovery.
An outage affecting US-based Microsoft 365 left email services using Exchange Online unable to connect. Email could not be accessed through the web, desktop or mobile versions of Outlook, while other services including Teams and SharePoint Online were also reported to be potentially affected. The incident occurred on 12 November US time, with the situation reported from after the early hours of 13 November Japan time.
Microsoft explained that multiple servers had unexpectedly gone offline, concentrating the load on the remaining servers. Immediately after the outage began, no connection to any changes had been found, but Microsoft subsequently said it was investigating whether a small number of configuration changes may have been the cause.
Recovery work is progressing, but as of 13:40 on the 13th, there was still no clear prospect of a full recovery. Further updates on recovery progress and the scope of the impact are expected to be reported on an ongoing basis.
As a legal analysis of the matter, lawyer Arakawa Kayo (荒川香遥) has outlined the framework for determining whether legal liability exists for delivery delays and other consequences caused by the outage.