"Looks Like I'll Have to Work This Weekend" Unprecedented Outage... Microsoft Meltdown Causes 'Work Paralysis'

Mass Outage Hits MS Outlook, Copilot, and More
Over 130,000 Outage Reports in the United States
Disruptions Also Hit Businesses in South Korea

Microsoft experienced a widespread outage affecting its email, online office software, and artificial intelligence (AI) services. The disruption also affected work at companies in South Korea and the United States, with email and collaboration tools failing to work.

Microsoft experienced a widespread outage affecting its email, online office software, and artificial intelligence (AI) services. Getty Images

According to Downdetector, a website that monitors online service outages, reports of access problems with Outlook, Microsoft's email service, exceeded 130,000 as of 1:20 p.m. Eastern Time on November 12.

Microsoft (MS) image. Reuters-Yonhap News

Users have reported problems including delays in sending and receiving emails and being unable to access their accounts. The outage affected not only email but also the AI service Copilot, the online office platform Microsoft 365, and Teams, the video conferencing and messaging service.

Companies in South Korea also reported disruptions. An official at a local IT company said, "Services are currently unavailable due to a global Microsoft outage."

Microsoft said on social media that it had "identified increased infrastructure load" and that "this is believed to be the cause of the connection errors." It added that it had begun recovery efforts, including redistributing access traffic, to ease the infrastructure load.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.