Microsoft announced on Monday evening that it had restored most of its Outlook and Teams services after a major disruption in services throughout the day. The company said that the complete restoration would take place by Tuesday. During the peak outage, more than 5,000 user-reported issues appeared on Downdetector, a website that tracks service interruptions. However, this number would actually have understated the real scale of the problem. Microsoft shared a post on X shortly before 11:00 p.m. ET, confirming that “functionality for all impacted services except Outlook on the web” had been restored to most users, while a remaining few were still affected. It also indicated that it was monitoring the whole case and troubleshooting measures to ensure full recovery.
Earlier that day, Microsoft had reported seeing improvement in the status of the incident, asserting that a fix had been installed. Reports incrementally withdrew on Downdetector throughout the hours that followed. At around 7:30 p.m. ET, the company estimated a further three hours for the problem to be completely resolved. Just sometime earlier, Microsoft estimated that the fix was already implemented on approximately 98 percent of the impacted systems by noon; some problems were still reported though, as propagating update status can take quite some time exhaustively across all systems.
Likewise, Microsoft’s other major services are now fully restored after an exceptional technical disruption observed yesterday. It anticipated a complete return to normalcy by Tuesday and further highlighted that over 5,000 user-reported issues had found their way into Downdetector at the peak of the outage. Calling a figure that should have grossly understated the actual scale of the problem. Just before 11:00 P.M. ET, a post shared by Microsoft on X read, “Functionality for all affected services except Outlook on the web has been restored for most users.” It only leaves a small fraction of users still affected. It further stated that the situation was being closely monitored with troubleshooting measures being undertaken for complete recovery.
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Earlier in the day, Microsoft communicated that it was beginning to see some progress with issues reported after the deployment of a fix. Usage reports for Downdetector as far as outages go saw a significant fall in volume in the hours immediately following this update. By 7:30 PM ET, the company projected a resolution of the problem within three hours. The message from Microsoft around noon indicated that the fix was already on 98% of the affected systems. Nonetheless, there were still some user-reported issues, as such matters generally take a while to propagate on all systems.
Nevertheless, Microsoft admitted that the recovery process was taking longer than expected for most users. At around 2 E.T., the company released a statement saying that it was still facing delays in its restoration process and did not specify a timeline on when the remaining issues would be resolved. Though it was steady progress, the delays had frustrated many users, particularly those depending on Outlook and Teams for business communication and collaboration; however, some office workers flocked to social media to make fun of what the rest might call a forced holiday, with just days left for the Thanksgiving holiday weekend.
Either way, it left a majority of people offline because of work-related issues, but the effect was far less serious compared to those severe technical faults reported this year. For instance, an IT software failure in CrowdStrike time during the summer was touted to be the largest by far in IT history. This incident caused air travel to stand still, disrupted hospital operations, and directly cost Fortune 500 companies over $5 billion. By contrast, Microsoft’s convenience was localized to its services and did not have such extended consequences. Microsoft emphasized that the situation needed to be resolved as quickly as possible and full functionality restored to users. The criticism of delays in recovering from this incident was offset by the promise that the issue would soon be successfully resolved. Users who still experienced disrupted services were asked to continue their patience as Microsoft’s troubleshooting efforts continued. Most users, however, found the interruption a good reminder of the necessity of dependable technology and the possible ripple effects that can result from even the smallest outages in this interconnected world.
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