Microsoft 365 Outage Knocks Out Email and Teams at Colleges and Schools 

A global outage of Microsoft 365 knocked out Outlook email, Teams and other Microsoft services from Thursday afternoon, Nov. 12, into Friday, and colleges and school districts were among the hardest-hit users. Campuses that run on Microsoft lost email between faculty and students, Teams classes and meetings, help-desk tickets, and at two universities the advice was to call 911 from a cell phone.

At 12:57 p.m. ET on Friday, Microsoft told administrators it was "seeing broad recovery and stability across our services" and apologized: "We are deeply sorry for the disruption this incident has caused you and your business." It said it was still restoring service "to remaining customers and regions" (UWM).

What Microsoft says happened

In the same Friday update, Microsoft gave its first explanation of the cause: "This was a technical issue not related to cyber or AI / agents. The incident was introduced by an issue during an earlier network capacity upgrade that surfaced following a recent network change. We have addressed the underlying issue." It said it restored services gradually, "validating stability at each stage," and would publish a full post-incident report once its review is complete (UWM; ABC News).

Microsoft first posted on X that it was "investigating reports of users experiencing issues accessing Exchange Online mailboxes through multiple connection methods in the Americas," under incident EX1550543. It later tracked the wider incident as MO1550821, listing Exchange Online, Microsoft Teams, SharePoint Online, Microsoft Copilot 365 and Microsoft Defender XDR as potentially affected. BleepingComputer reported that the company dated the Microsoft 365 incident from 1:26 p.m. ET, after earlier reports of mailbox problems in the Americas (BleepingComputer). A separate Teams messaging incident in North and South America had run from 9:45 to 10:53 a.m. ET; Microsoft has not said whether the two are related.

Microsoft's explanation changed through Thursday afternoon and night. Its updates to administrators, reposted in full by the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, trace the search for a fix:

The Register reported that the outage also took down Intune and the Microsoft 365 Apps admin center, the tools IT staff would use to diagnose it (The Register). Overnight, Microsoft said it kept an "extended 48-hour email timeout window" in place "to help protect delayed messages as delivery catches up" (UWM). UW-Milwaukee closed its outage notice at 12:30 p.m. Central on Friday.

How big it was

Reports of Outlook problems on Downdetector climbed to about 130,000 shortly after 1 p.m. ET, according to Al Jazeera and Reuters, and were still close to 30,000 at 7:12 p.m. ET (Tom's Guide). ABC News described it as "a global outage that spanned across two workdays" (ABC News). Microsoft's consumer status page said the issue "impacts Outlook.com, OneDrive, OneNote[,] To Do, Teams, and Microsoft 365 for the web." Federal agencies, Capitol Hill offices, Los Angeles County agencies and a Colorado sheriff's office reported disruptions (NBC News), and New York City's emergency management office warned that emails to city agencies could be delayed (ABC News).

How colleges were hit

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Technology Services listed Exchange Online (Outlook), Teams, SharePoint Online and Copilot 365 as confirmed impacted and published a table of workarounds (Illinois Technology Services):

• Email: "Items are not being delivered or received. Emails are not lost." Messages are expected to stay queued and arrive once service returns.
• Canvas: students and instructors won't get Canvas email notifications about assignments and grades, so they should check the Canvas website or app directly.
• Teams: messages may not send, and meetings should move to Zoom. Calls in Teams may not connect.
• Help desk: emailed requests won't create a ticket, so people should use the Illinois Help Center or a walk-in Service Desk.

Calls to 911 and the University of Illinois Police Department's non-emergency line through Microsoft Teams were unavailable, the Daily Illini reported, citing a UIPD release. Police advised using a mobile phone for 911.

On Friday at 12:30 p.m. Central, Illinois said Microsoft was reporting broad recovery and that IT staff would keep monitoring through the weekend. It told people to check their outbox and drafts for messages that didn't go out and their sent folder to confirm delivery, warned that the email backlog could slow delivery, and said that from Monday, Nov. 16, anyone still missing an expected email could submit a support ticket (Illinois Technology Services).

University of Oregon. A UO Alert at noon Pacific time said: "Microsoft services, including email and Teams, are degraded. Use cell phones for 911 calls" (UO Alerts).

Other universities. University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee logged the outage from 10:17 a.m. Central and warned that "[c]ampus workflows that rely on email may also be affected" (UWM). The University of Vermont listed Teams, Outlook and Copilot as affected, with an "unknown duration" (UVM). UT San Antonio told students, faculty and staff that "[n]o action is needed at this time, and users do not need to submit a support ticket," and later said systems were "gradually coming back online," with some users still facing intermittent disruptions and email delays (UT San Antonio). James Madison University and Boston University also posted alerts about Outlook and other Microsoft 365 services (JMU Libraries; BU TechWeb).

Community colleges. Cypress College in California said the disruption hit Outlook and Microsoft 365 apps across its district, and that "[a]ccess to Canvas may be possible through myGateway, although the connection may be unstable" (Cypress College). At the San Mateo County Community College District, users could not view their email boxes, the student newspaper The Skyline View reported (The Skyline View).

How K-12 was hit

The Orange County Department of Education in California said the outage stopped employees from sending or receiving Outlook email. "We know how important reliable communication is to the daily work of our schools and the families they serve," County Superintendent of Schools Stefan Bean said. The department told staff to use phone calls for urgent matters and said restarting computers or signing in again was unlikely to help (OCDE).

Sunshine Coast School District 46 in British Columbia told families on Thursday it did not know when district email would be restored: "If you need to contact your school, please call directly." By Friday it reported: "Microsoft 365 has been restored, and district email is operational again" (SD46).

The outage reached classrooms overseas on Friday morning local time. In Queensland, Australia, the Capricornia School of Distance Education said some students could not access lessons because Teams and Outlook were affected (ABC Australia).

What schools can take from it

Microsoft's full post-incident report is still to come. In the meantime, the campus notices point to a few checks for any school or college that runs on Microsoft 365:

We will update this story when Microsoft publishes its post-incident report.