Microsoft marked its Exchange Online and broader Microsoft 365 incidents restored late Friday, a step toward normal service for businesses worldwide, though recovery continued for some customers and regions.
The Exchange Online record changed at 11:15 p.m. ET Nov. 13 (04:15 UTC Nov. 14), followed by the wider Microsoft 365 record at 11:17 p.m. ET (04:17 UTC). Both records said restoration efforts were continuing for some customers and regions.
Microsoft traced the disruption, which began Nov. 12, to an issue associated with an earlier network capacity upgrade. The effects became apparent after another network change. The company said cyber activity and AI agents were not responsible.
The incident impaired access to Exchange Online mailboxes and disrupted email delivery. Some Teams and Copilot functions that use Exchange Online were also affected, while Microsoft 365 features without that dependency continued operating. EconoTimes previously covered the wider Microsoft 365 outage.
CBS News reported Downdetector logged more than 130,000 reports of Microsoft problems shortly after 1 p.m. ET Nov. 12, with reports from more than 70 countries and territories. The figures represent reports submitted to the outage tracker, not a confirmed count of affected people.
Public agencies also reported disruption. CBS News and The Associated Press reported that Singapore's Government Technology Agency said government email was unavailable, while the Philippines' Supreme Court reported effects on some operations.
Earlier Microsoft updates discussed high infrastructure load and whether traffic was contributing. Its later account linked the load to servers becoming unexpectedly unavailable, rather than an overall increase in traffic. The detailed technical sequence is due to be addressed in the company's post-incident reports.
Microsoft set a two-business-day window for a preliminary account and five business days for the final version, according to its incident record.
