Outlook has been down since Thursday evening, and by Friday morning things still hadn’t returned to normal. In many countries Microsoft’s email won’t open, won’t send, or arrives late — on computers, phones and the web alike.
According to Microsoft, a large number of servers suddenly stopped responding, while others became overloaded. The company says it has no evidence of a cyberattack.
There is still no estimated time for a full return to normal.
The fault lies in Microsoft’s servers, not in your own computer: don’t change your password and don’t reinstall anything. But the story matters even for those whose email is working fine today, because almost every company has entrusted its mail to a single provider and has no plan for the day it stops working.
In a country of small businesses like San Marino, where orders, quotes and paperwork travel by email, it’s worth asking how your company would cope with two days without mail.
What happened
The outage affects Exchange Online, the Microsoft service that powers Outlook mail for businesses, firms and public bodies. Microsoft places the start of the problem at 5:17pm on Thursday, November 12 (Italian time). For most users, the crash became apparent about an hour later.
On Downdetector, the site that collects user reports of service problems, complaints about Outlook topped 130,000 shortly after 7pm, coming in from 74 countries and territories within about an hour. These are voluntary reports, so Microsoft has not said how many mailboxes were actually affected.
Between one and two thousand reports came from Italy, according to outlets that reviewed the data, and the number began climbing again on Friday morning as offices reopened.
Abroad, the situation was worse. In the United States, several public offices warned citizens of delays in replies. In Australia, schools, courts and federal offices ran into trouble. In Japan, several ministries were left without email for much of Friday.
Overnight, Microsoft rerouted traffic, restarted servers and rolled back a recent change to its network configuration. The company repeatedly admitted that its fixes weren’t having the expected effect. At 8:29am on Friday it reported seeing the first positive results after a fix was applied to part of the server fleet.
The root cause has not been disclosed. Microsoft has promised to explain it in a report once the fault is resolved. On the possibility of a cyberattack, the company says it is not aware of any malicious activity behind the incident — though that is not a definitive denial.
Why it matters for your company too
When mail stops, everything that depends on it stops too: the calendar, meeting invitations, the Copilot assistant. Microsoft also lists among the affected services the tools that scan links and attachments within corporate email.
Scammers know this. In recent hours, some banks in Australia and Singapore have warned customers that fraudsters may pose as technical support, offering to fix “the Microsoft problem,” or asking for codes and passwords.
And this isn’t the first time. In January, Microsoft’s mail service went down for nearly ten hours. In late August, problems lasted around three days. Companies using another provider aren’t immune either — every service has its own outages. The question is the same for everyone.
What to do, in practice
First: don’t touch anything. Passwords, accounts and software settings have nothing to do with it. The service status can be checked on the official page status.cloud.microsoft.
Second: use another channel and tell your customers. Phone, WhatsApp, a mailbox with another provider. According to Microsoft, calls and Teams chats are working. A quick message to anyone awaiting a reply prevents them from feeling ignored.
Third: be wary of anyone who promises to reactivate your mailbox. No one should reset a password from a message, hand over codes received by SMS, or let a stranger remotely connect to their computer.
Fourth: keep a record of the timing. Subscribers can ask Microsoft for a credit on their plan when the service falls below the level promised in the contract. It isn’t issued automatically — it must be requested by December 31, specifying the hours and users affected.
Fifth: decide your plan B now. An emergency channel everyone knows about, customer phone numbers kept somewhere outside of email, a backup mailbox with another provider. It takes half an hour to set up.
Mail service will return. What remains to be decided is how your company will operate the next time it stops.
If no one in the company can say what to do in the first hour without email, there is no plan B.
Situation updated as of 8:50am on Friday, November 13. The outage is still ongoing.
Osservatorio Strategic.sm
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If you don’t have a plan B, let’s build one together. Strategic is available to companies that want to know how to keep working when email, management software or networks go down, whether due to a fault or an attack.
The full guide for businesses is available at strategic.sm.
