Microsoft tested a server fix Thursday after connectivity problems disrupted Outlook and other Microsoft 365 services, with the company tracing the strain on its infrastructure to servers unexpectedly going offline.
Microsoft described its latest repair effort in incident notices published through the University of Pennsylvania’s public extract of Microsoft service alerts. The notices continued to list service degradation in updates dated November 12 at 3:00 p.m. CST.
The company said affected servers were failing automated health checks. It was testing a change that bypassed a component involved in those checks while investigating unusually high processor usage.
Microsoft listed Exchange Online, Teams, SharePoint Online, Microsoft 365 Copilot, Defender XDR, Planner and To Do among potentially affected services. Mailbox access problems included Outlook on the web and other connection methods.
Downdetector recorded nearly 130,000 Outlook problem reports shortly after noon CST. Users described trouble sending and receiving messages or loading inboxes. Reports later declined. Those reports do not establish the total number of affected customers.
Microsoft had earlier announced recovery from a Teams disruption in North America, the Associated Press reported. That earlier recovery did not establish that the broader Microsoft 365 disruption had ended.
In its incident notices, Microsoft said unavailable servers had shifted work onto the remaining infrastructure. The company paused deployments and configuration changes, redirected traffic and restarted servers as it worked to restore access.
The latest notices did not identify a recent change that matched the start of the disruption. Microsoft continued to investigate the underlying failure and had not marked the incidents as resolved as of 3 p.m. CST.
Provided by Dallas Express
