Users across multiple countries, including the United States, Italy, France, Brazil and Canada, were unable to send or receive emails for about two hours. Microsoft traced the disruption to overloaded infrastructure across several regions

A disruption to Microsoft’s global infrastructure left Outlook users unable to access their email accounts across multiple countries on November 12, exposing the scale of the service interruption far beyond the United States, where the problems first emerged. For roughly two hours, users in several parts of the world were unable to send or receive messages before services gradually returned to normal at around 8:30 p.m. Italian time.

The Microsoft Outlook outage generated a sharp increase in reports on Downdetector, the platform that tracks disruptions to online services. Reports came from Italy, France, Brazil and Canada, among other countries, indicating that the problem was international rather than confined to a single market.

The disruption centered particularly on email access, affecting users who rely on Microsoft’s services for everyday communications. The inability to send and receive messages persisted for approximately two hours, with the situation progressively improving during the evening.

Microsoft identifies infrastructure overload

The first reports came from the United States. Microsoft acknowledged the problem in a post on X, saying it was investigating reports from users experiencing difficulties accessing Exchange Online email through different connection methods in the Americas.

According to NBC, the company confirmed shortly before noon U.S. time that it had received reports of users having trouble accessing their email accounts.

Microsoft subsequently provided further details about the possible cause of the disruption, pointing to excessive demand on parts of its infrastructure across several geographical areas.

“We have determined that a portion of our infrastructure is experiencing high load across multiple regions, which is likely contributing to connection errors,” the company said in one of its updates.

The response involved redistributing traffic across its wider global infrastructure in an effort to balance the load and reduce connection failures.

“We have begun redistributing traffic across our broader worldwide infrastructure to help balance the load,” Microsoft added.

By approximately 8:30 p.m. Italian time, the situation was progressively returning to normal after the international disruption had affected email services for around two hours.

(Photo: © AndKronos)