Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT) shares fell more than 2% to $511.29 in pre-market trading on Friday as a global Microsoft 365 outage continued to disrupt business services despite progress on recovery efforts.
In its latest Friday update, Microsoft reported incremental improvements across several affected services as recovery efforts progressed. A patch targeting an upstream authentication and routing component had improved server stability, but overall service capacity had not returned to normal. The company continued to manage network traffic and process delayed emails, extending the email timeout window to 48 hours to preserve messages. It had not announced a timeline for full restoration.
The outage began Thursday with Exchange Online connectivity problems before affecting other Microsoft 365 services worldwide, disrupting businesses and government agencies. At its peak, Downdetector recorded approximately 130,000 reports of Outlook problems in the United States. The figure represents user-submitted reports, not a confirmed count of affected users.
Microsoft said a process responsible for establishing secure connections had become overloaded, causing affected servers to stop processing requests. Some servers also became unresponsive when traffic resumed following a restart.
The company began reversing a recent network configuration change that coincided with the start of the outage, but had not determined whether the change triggered the failures. Microsoft said it had found no indication of malicious activity and planned to publish a detailed report after resolving the incident.
Outlook, Copilot and Security Functions Affected
Microsoft tracked the disruptions under service-health notices EX1550543 for Exchange Online and MO1550821 for the wider Microsoft 365 suite.
According to the notices, users could have trouble accessing their Outlook mailboxes in web and desktop applications and experience delays in email delivery. Microsoft 365 Copilot users could experience problems loading chats, receiving responses, or accessing workplace information, including emails, calendars, and files.
Beyond email and AI tools, the outage also affected enterprise security functions. Microsoft identified potential issues with Defender for Office 365’s Safe Links URL verification and reported disruptions affecting Microsoft Purview services, including data-loss prevention, information classification, and compliance capabilities.
The disruption affected some Microsoft 365 services more than others. Core Microsoft Teams messaging, calls, and online meetings remained largely functional, although calendar scheduling and other Exchange-dependent features could fail. Users could also continue accessing files stored directly in SharePoint Online.
Businesses and Government Agencies Report Disruptions
The effects extended beyond Microsoft’s own applications to third-party AI services that rely on its platforms. OpenAI reported problems with Microsoft connectors, including failures involving new connections and connected tools. Anthropic confirmed widespread mail, calendar, and search failures affecting its Microsoft 365 connector. Claude for Outlook was also affected.
Government agencies also reported service interruptions. Australia’s federal police and domestic intelligence agency confirmed they were affected, while the government activated an existing agreement with Microsoft to seek priority restoration of services.
The disruption also affected scheduled corporate financial reporting. Workhorse Group rescheduled its third-quarter earnings conference call from November 12 to November 16, citing business disruptions caused by the Microsoft outage. The company said it would release its quarterly results before the rescheduled call.
Microsoft Stock and Tokenized Share Performance
Microsoft shares closed Thursday at $523.00, up 0.36%, after declining 2.20% on Tuesday and 2.26% on Wednesday. The stock lost 2.41% over the five trading sessions through Thursday but remained up 8.14% year to date.
Separately, Microsoft Tokenized bStocks (MSFTB) was trading at $510.69, down 1.82% over the past 24 hours, according to CoinMarketCap. MSFTB’s 24-hour percentage change reflects a rolling trading window, rather than solely the U.S. pre-market session.