US Labor Department Inspector General Anthony D’Esposito mocked Microsoft over its Outlook outage, contrasting the technology giant’s ability to process 6,000 H-1B applications with its struggle to restore access to users’ inboxes.
“Outlook is back. @Microsoft can process 6,000 H-1B applications, but processing your inbox is apparently a tougher assignment,” D’Esposito wrote on X, taking a dig at the company after its email service began recovering from a widespread disruption.
The remark came after Microsoft’s Outlook, Teams, Copilot and other Microsoft 365 services experienced a major outage that affected users, businesses and government organisations across several countries.
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Microsoft outage disrupts Outlook, Teams and Copilot
The comments came as Microsoft worked to restore services after a widespread outage on November 12 disrupted Outlook, Teams, Copilot and other Microsoft 365 applications. Users reported problems accessing inboxes, sending and receiving emails, and using workplace communication tools.
According to the Associated Press, nearly 130,000 users reported problems accessing Outlook on Downdetector shortly after 1 pm Eastern Time on Thursday. Thousands of others also reported issues with Teams and Copilot.
Microsoft said a portion of its infrastructure was experiencing elevated load and that several servers had unexpectedly become unavailable after failing automated health checks. The company began working to bring the affected servers back online and restore connectivity.
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A Reuters report on November 13 said the disruption lasted more than 12 hours and affected businesses and government agencies across several countries. The outage also disrupted Microsoft’s Copilot assistant and connections used by OpenAI and Anthropic’s AI services.
Microsoft reports progress in restoring affected services
Microsoft said its efforts to restart affected infrastructure and restore server availability were showing positive results. In an update posted on November 13, the company said it was recovering parts of its infrastructure in an isolated manner and monitoring their performance to ensure stability before expanding the recovery process.
The update followed earlier setbacks, when some servers that had been brought back online became unresponsive again after receiving traffic. Microsoft said it was monitoring the results of its recovery measures and working to improve service availability across affected regions.
According to the Associated Press, Microsoft reported improving stability and capacity on Friday, with email queues nearing normal levels, although some users continued to face intermittent access problems and delayed messages.