Microsoft Overcomes Major Outlook and Teams Outage: Services Nearly Fully Restored

After a Day of Disruptions, Microsoft Reports Significant Recovery as It Works Toward Full Restoration

On Monday evening, Microsoft announced that most of the services affected by the major outage of Outlook and Teams had been restored, with full recovery expected by Tuesday. The company had faced significant delays throughout the day, leading to a wave of frustration among users relying on the tools for work, especially as the issue coincided with the lead-up to the Thanksgiving holiday.

The technical disruption, which affected millions of users worldwide, was traced to an issue that prevented access to key features in Microsoft’s popular productivity applications. As the outage unfolded, more than 5,000 user-reported issues were recorded on Downdetector, although the scale of the problem was likely broader, as this data only reflected those who reported the issue.

In a post on X (formerly Twitter), Microsoft confirmed that functionality for most impacted services had been restored, but noted that “Outlook on the web” remained partially affected for a small number of users. The company assured customers it was closely monitoring the situation and troubleshooting the remaining issues.

By late Monday afternoon, the tech giant reported some recovery after deploying a fix. Downdetector showed a sharp decline in outage reports, signaling that the company’s efforts were beginning to take effect. Microsoft initially estimated that full resolution would occur within hours, with 98% of affected environments already receiving the fix by noon. However, despite these positive developments, the process of fully restoring services took longer than anticipated, and some users continued to face delays in accessing the platforms.

While some users in the United States jokingly appreciated the unexpected downtime ahead of the holiday, the outage had a serious impact on productivity for office workers worldwide. Microsoft acknowledged that it would take additional time for all systems to fully recover, and provided no specific timeline for when the final services would be restored.

This incident comes on the heels of a year marked by significant IT outages globally. While Microsoft’s outage was among the most high-profile in recent weeks, it was far from the only one. In the summer, CrowdStrike’s software failure became known as the largest IT outage in history, halting air travel, disrupting healthcare services, and costing Fortune 500 companies more than $5 billion in direct losses.

As Microsoft continues to work toward full service restoration, the company has urged users to remain patient while it resolves the last of the issues. Despite the disruption, the tech giant expressed pride in its swift response, reassuring customers that steps were being taken to prevent similar issues from arising in the future.