Microsoft outage may persist as fix is ‘not taking as expected’
It is anticipated the outage may persist for some time, as efforts to fix the issue are not “taking as expected”.
In an update to its website, Microsoft said:
We’ve monitored the status of the changes applied to improve serviceability and confirmed that change is not taking as expected.
We’re identifying alternate workstreams that can be applied to increase capacity in the face of sustained traffic management imbalances.
Key events
Microsoft: seeing ‘marginal success’ patching servers
This is Graeme Wearden in the UK, taking over from Achol Arok.
Microsoft has just pushed out a small update to its service status page, saying it is seeing ’marginal success’ from its efforts to fix the problem.
It says:
Current status: We’re continuing to monitor activity across regions to evaluate server status and determine actions that can be taken to improve capacity. This includes reviewing server performance and confirming that developed patches have been applied and working as intended after infrastructure reboots are completed.
At this point, we have observed marginal success. In parallel, we’re taking action to expand capacity through the utilization of Virtual Machines.
But the upshot, as Europe wakes up, is that users may still be unable to connect to multiple Microsoft 365 services…
Tech giants and international airlines say they’ve been hit by outage
US AI companies OpenAI and Anthropic said they had faced issues with Microsoft connectors, while Indian airlines IndiGo and Akasa Air said their email support services were impacted.
The outage also disrupted fund management at Taiwanese securities firms, life insurers, and investment trust companies. One of the companies went as far as cancelling a bond repurchase agreement transaction it had already scheduled, a source familiar with the situation told Reuters, declining to provide the name of the company.
Josh Gilbert, a market analyst at trading platform eToro, said investors would likely look past the outage but that repeated disruptions could hurt Microsoft over time.
I think investors will take this in their stride for now, because very few of these customers can realistically walk away from the Microsoft ecosystem overnight.
The bigger worry is that this isn’t the first 365 outage this year, and if reliability starts to look like a recurring problem, it hands every IT department a reason to think twice before putting even more of their business in one provider’s hands.
The market will want to see Microsoft prove it can keep the lights on before it asks customers to spend more on Copilot.
Microsoft’s global outage will cost Australia billions, expert says
The Microsoft outage is being described as a disaster for the Australian business sector, with costs running into the billions of dollars.
The financial impact had already been massive in the 12 hours the systems had been down, a privacy and security expert said. The cost to Australia would be billions of dollars, said Ashwin Pal, of the risk advisory firm RSM Australia:
That’s not just direct, but indirect costs as well.
But a protracted event like this can easily be the straw that breaks the camel’s back for smaller entities.
Pal said his clients had activated business continuity and disaster recovery plans, but many businesses didn’t have a fallback.
They’re just at a standstill – if you don’t actually have a plan B, then you’ve got a problem.
Pal said that Microsoft was obviously struggling to recover, which raised bigger questions.
I’m a technologist and I’m actually flabbergasted as to how something like this could have happened … they pushed out a change which should have been tested.
Computer society calls for review of Australia’s reliance on single providers
The Australian Computer Society (ACS) has renewed calls for the federal government to review which critical IT systems rely on a single provider and where backup options could keep the economy running.
The organisation also accused the government of failing to effectively communicate updates to the public.
Chief executive Dr Prins Ralston said:
Who in Australia was accountable for keeping them informed? And who will answer for the lost productivity and the cost to the Australian economy?
Ralston said the outage “exposed Australia’s reliance on foreign technology”, particularly on small businesses.
Customers may be able to claim service credits under their cloud contracts. Those credits won’t make up for a lost morning of trade for a small business.
Australians who couldn’t get paid, couldn’t send an invoice, or couldn’t reach a government service this morning are entitled to be worried. ASIO and the AFP had workarounds. Most small businesses and many agencies don’t. Resilience shouldn’t depend on whether you happen to have a second system.
Saffron Howden
Australian economic impact unknown
The assistant treasurer, Daniel Mulino, said he could not quantify the impact the outage was having on the Australian economy.
Speaking on ABC’s Afternoon Briefing, he said:
What I could say is, I think, like everybody, I appreciate a bit of downtime from my email occasionally but, obviously, would rather it not happen from a global downturn.
Look, this is a global issue, and it reinforces to us how important the digital side of our economy is and how interconnected everything is.
Obviously, the quicker this gets up, the lower the disruption will be.
Yu-chen Li
Microsoft outage disrupts Taiwanese businesses
Microsoft’s global outage has disrupted businesses in Taiwan, with more than a hundred reports of service disruptions recorded from the island between 3am and 9am on Friday, according to outage-tracking website Downdetector.
Office workers said they were unable to send or receive emails through Outlook, while others reported problems with Teams’ calendar and scheduling functions.
The Friday disruption has prompted jokes on social media, with some office workers suggesting they might as well call it a day and go home early to enjoy the weekend.
“Dear Microsoft, please don’t rush to fix Outlook. And while you’re at it, could you take Teams down for maintenance too? Sincerely, an exhausted Taiwanese worker,” wrote one user on social media platform Threads.
The post garnered more than 18,000 likes within a few hours, after some of the features including messaging have gradually returned to normal on Teams.
Josh Taylor
Microsoft working ‘with urgency’ to end outage
The latest update from Microsoft has arrived, and there’s still no sign the outage will end soon.
The company said its latest fix is still experiencing issues with traffic surges, and Microsoft is still trying to pinpoint the underlying cause.
Microsoft said:
Current actions we are taking include scaling up virtual machines to increase capacity and reduce load. Additionally, we’re querying for machines in a bad state to perform a force sync for our recent network change, which may improve service availability.
However, we are encountering issues with the machines being stuck in a bad state, preventing our changes from syncing as expected. We’ll continue to monitor the effectiveness of changes applied so we can determine what refinements are necessary.
Microsoft rules out cyber-attack as cause of outage
Microsoft executive Charles Lamanna has confirmed the outage was not caused by a cybersecurity breach.
In a post on social media, Lamanna said:
We regret that today’s outages caused disruptions for our customers, and we are working to address the issue.
We will continue to share more information as soon as we have it, and for now I can confirm that there is no indication this is the result of malicious or cyber activity.
Government departments warn clients and stakeholders of disruptions
Several federal agencies have issued notices saying they are not receiving communications due to the outage.
Australia’s department of foreign affairs and trade published this statement on its website:
Due to the global Microsoft outage, all urgent sanctions enquiries should be directed to the Australian Sanctions Office by telephone.
The department of agriculture, fisheries and forestry issued this notice:
As of Friday 13 November 2026, there is a broad service disruption affecting DAFF messaging due to the current Microsoft D365 outage. As a result, clients may not be able to send emails to or receive emails from departmental systems.
WA government says schools are experiencing classroom disruptions
The Western Australia Government said it was aware “the Microsoft service disruption is impacting administrative email and staff collaboration tools at schools”.
A government spokesperson said:
It’s important to know that classroom teaching and student learning are continuing as normal.
The department of education’s IT teams are closely tracking Microsoft’s restoration efforts, and they are keeping all staff advised.
There are four paper-based exams today that will not be impacted.
Microsoft outage may persist as fix is ‘not taking as expected’
It is anticipated the outage may persist for some time, as efforts to fix the issue are not “taking as expected”.
In an update to its website, Microsoft said:
We’ve monitored the status of the changes applied to improve serviceability and confirmed that change is not taking as expected.
We’re identifying alternate workstreams that can be applied to increase capacity in the face of sustained traffic management imbalances.
Victorian government warns of opportunistic scammers amid outage
Achol Arok
The Victorian government has urged residents to be extra vigilant against scammers attempting to take advantage of the outage.
A government spokesperson said:
We urge Victorians to take extra caution against scammers by avoiding clicking on unexpected links they receive on their personal devices, or sharing personal details with callers claiming to be from banks or technology companies.
The government said it would continue to “monitor the situation and will work through any potential impacts as required”, and has so far reported no major issues across its departments.
Departments and agencies have made adjustments to work through the disruption, with no significant impacts reported to frontline emergency response, clinical care, public transport or VCE examinations.
Achol Arok
Some hospitals having clerical issues but no impact on patient care, AMA says
The Australian Medical Association (AMA) says it has received reports that some hospitals and health clinics are experiencing clerical issues, but there have been no impacts to patient care.
AMA president Dr Michael Bonning said:
We’ve had some facilities return to using paper for scripts because authentication to get into lots of prescribing software requires multifactor verification, which requires you to be able to access your Microsoft-supported email.
We don’t use any of these things for direct patient care. It’s always the authorisation in systems, so we’ve always got workarounds for that.
Achol Arok
GPs say they’re experiencing admin issues but patient care not affected
The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners (RACGP) said some of its services had been disrupted by the outage, but patient safety had not been compromised.
A spokesperson for the RACGP said:
“We have no incoming or outgoing emails. Yes, it is affecting our admin and backend systems, but it is not affecting patient care.
“Remote retrieval work in the Top End of the NT does not appear to be significantly affected.”
Adeshola Ore
The ACT government says it is responding to the outage:
Digital Canberra is working with directorates to identify affected systems and apply mitigations where possible. Some government services may be impacted.
Precautionary measures will be taken for individual services where necessary and directorates will be initiating business continuity options to maintain services.
Josh Taylor
Microsoft narrows down cause of outage
In the latest update on the Microsoft 365 outage, the company said it has found that the process on servers affected that is responsible for establishing a secure connection becomes overwhelmed, causing those servers to stop processing requests.
The company said it was preparing a configuration change to address this, and will test it out on a subset of servers before applying more broadly, along with restarting those servers.
A recent configuration change is also being rolled back. It was this change that correlated with the start of the outage, and Microsoft is watching to see if this contributes to the recovery effort.
Service NSW asks customers not to visit its centres
Service NSW, the one-stop-shop agency for residents, drivers and business owners to access government services in NSW, has encouraged customers to delay their visits to its service centres.
A spokesperson told AAP:
Some transactions in Service Centres and Call Centres are unavailable at this time.
Customers are encouraged to delay their visit to a Service Centre and to complete transactions online, where possible.
The agency said a priority call-back system is in place for those unable to complete urgent transactions during the outage.
Employees in the Northern Territory government also said their services were down in their department, AAP has confirmed.
‘Looks like we will have to talk to people’: Australians on their email-free day
Adeshola Ore
On social media, people are sharing how the outage has impacted their work day.
On Reddit, some users are reporting that while Outlook emails are down they can still access Microsoft’s workplace messaging platform, Teams.
“They could have taken Teams out with them so I’d be able to … just sit here and do absolutely nothing,” one Reddit user wrote.
On LinkedIn, many are posting about what an email-free day looks like.
“It’s all SMS and phone calls today… looks like we will have to talk to people while Microsoft sort out their email issues!” wrote Brisbane-based Tom Freer.
Government agencies contacted by Guardian Australia for comment said they themselves were having trouble responding to media queries as their own email inboxes were down. One agency said they’d been relayed an email via text.
Josh Taylor
Microsoft emails most affected in outage
The latest update from Microsoft reveals most of the services experiencing the outage now are those that connect to Microsoft Exchange – the service used for emails.
Currently users still may not be able to access their inbox using Outlook.
Notably, Microsoft now says Team chats and online meetings “remain largely functional” but meeting scheduling, and creating chats might be an issue due to the Exchange issue.
