Microsoft Outage Drags On as Email Recovery Spreads

Microsoft’s global service disruption continued into Friday as the company reported partial recovery of email services but stopped short of declaring the outage over. In its 11:04 UTC update on November 13, Microsoft said recovery actions had been completed across portions of the affected infrastructure in Asia Pacific, with traffic being restored gradually.

Mailbox access and the processing of delayed email were improving, the company said, although some users could still face intermittent problems. Engineers were extending recovery work to other regions while adding capacity and stabilizing services.

Why the disruption reaches beyond Outlook

The affected functions share a dependency on Exchange Online, according to Microsoft’s service notice. Problems can therefore reach calendars, Copilot access to work data and administration tools. That does not mean every feature is offline: most core Teams calls, meetings and chats remain functional, as does direct access to files stored in SharePoint.

Reducing email queues remains a priority. Microsoft has retained an extended 48-hour email timeout window to help protect delayed messages while delivery catches up, the notice says.

The disruption has also reached public services. In a November 12 notice, Alberta’s Court of King’s Bench warned of delays in communications and the processing of electronically submitted documents.

Microsoft says it has no evidence of malicious activity associated with the incident. A full account of the root cause and preventive measures is due after mitigation, according to its latest update. The cause therefore remains subject to the company’s final incident report.