(Photo courtesy of Anadolu)
ISTANBUL, Türkiye – Microsoft said Thursday, November 12, that unexpected server outages, rather than a surge in user traffic, caused widespread connectivity issues affecting Microsoft 365 services across multiple regions.
In an update posted on X, Microsoft 365 Status explained that several servers had unexpectedly become unavailable, placing additional pressure on the remaining infrastructure.
The company clarified that the increased system load was not caused by higher traffic volumes and said engineers were working to safely restore the affected servers.
The disruption affected access to Exchange Online mailboxes and potentially other Microsoft 365 services, with users experiencing connectivity problems through different platforms and access methods.
To address the issue, Microsoft suspended deployments, redirected network traffic away from affected infrastructure and restarted impacted servers.
The company earlier reported unusually high infrastructure loads across several regions, prompting efforts to redistribute connection traffic throughout its global network.
According to outage-monitoring platform Downdetector, more than 97,000 reports involving Outlook were recorded in the United States, alongside over 38,000 complaints related to Microsoft 365 and approximately 4,500 reports involving Microsoft Teams.
However, the figures do not necessarily reflect the total number of affected users, as Downdetector relies on reports voluntarily submitted by users.
Microsoft advised customers to monitor its official service status website and Microsoft 365 admin center for further updates under incident references EX1550543 and MO1550821.
