Microsoft’s outage, which began during the US workday on November 12, 2026, has spread to Asia-Pacific business hours. Microsoft says it is seeing partial recovery in regions where it has applied adjustments, but efforts to improve service are not progressing as expected. Microsoft has attributed the disruption to server issues rather than a cyberattack.
The disruption has been wide. AFP reported that Microsoft products were knocked out in 74 countries and territories within an hour, according to the outage tracker Downdetector. Outlook, Teams and other Microsoft 365 services, including Copilot and OneDrive, were affected, leaving users unable to send or receive email, access their inboxes or load some applications.
The problem reached Asia-Pacific in the working day that followed. Downdetector showed outages for several Microsoft services in Australia, India and Japan, and in India the disruption was still affecting Outlook early on Friday morning local time. Australian news agency AAP reported that the country’s intelligence agency and the federal police were among organisations caught up in the problem.
Microsoft’s own updates have been more cautious than its recovery claims. In its latest update, the company said it was seeing partial recovery across regions where it had applied adjustments, but that efforts to improve serviceability were not progressing as expected. Some services returned after Microsoft redirected traffic, but Open Magazine reported that the recovery did not hold.
Microsoft has said the outage was caused by server issues, not a cyberattack. Reuters reported that the company gave that explanation, but the cause has not been independently confirmed, and the company has not yet released a full account of what failed.
The effects have spread beyond email and messaging. Electric truck maker Workhorse Group postponed its third-quarter results from November 12 to November 16, citing business disruptions caused by the outage. Reuters described the incident as affecting businesses and governments alike.
The timing matters for businesses in the region. The outage began during the US working day and carried into Asia’s working hours, so offices in Japan, India and Australia faced disruption on a Friday. Companies that route email, calendars and collaboration through a single cloud platform have little fallback when it fails.
The episode also highlights how often regional cloud incidents occur. Status pages recorded an Asia-Pacific Microsoft outage in October 2025 that lasted about two hours, and a separate Azure incident in Southeast Asia in August 2026 that lasted about 2.2 hours. Those incidents were smaller, but they point to a pattern of concentrated risk.
The next signals will be Microsoft’s post-incident report, the restoration of full service in Asia-Pacific and any change in the company’s guidance to customers. Businesses affected by the outage will be watching whether it has caused financial losses and whether they can claim compensation under their service agreements.
