“Can I go home now?” “Can I go back to sleep?” “Forget work — let’s go drinking!” These were among the reactions from Japanese workers after a global Microsoft 365 outage reached Japan on Friday morning, leaving employees struggling to access emails, use Teams and open Copilot just as the workday began. While some users were tearing their hair out, others appeared to have reached a simple conclusion: if the technology needed to work isn’t working, perhaps there’s no point working at all. For some, the unexpected disruption seemed to offer an unlikely opportunity for an early finish.

The outage was not confined to Japan, and it was not new by the time Japanese workers reached their desks. Problems with Outlook and other Microsoft services began on Thursday in the United States, where reports to the outage tracker Downdetector peaked at nearly 140,000 around 3 a.m. Japan time. By the time offices opened in Tokyo, the disruption was more than 12 hours old and still spreading across the Asia-Pacific region, including India and Australia. Government agencies in the US and Australia were affected, as were companies including OpenAI and Anthropic.

In Japan, the impact reached the government itself. Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Masanao Ozaki said the outage had affected the government’s IT infrastructure and that officials were monitoring the situation closely. It is the second major disruption to Microsoft 365 this year, following an outage on January 22 that also took down Outlook and Teams, raising questions among corporate clients about the reliability of a platform used by more than 430 million people.

What Went Wrong

Outlook, one of the most widely used workplace email platforms, was among the services affected, with users reporting they could not send or receive emails. Teams, Copilot, SharePoint and other services that depend on Microsoft’s Exchange Online email infrastructure also experienced problems, while features that did not rely on Exchange Online remained functional. The problems hit everyday office tasks, from communicating with colleagues and clients to searching for information, organizing meetings and managing projects, leaving many employees struggling to get through their usual workload.

In its service status updates, Microsoft initially attributed the outage to several servers unexpectedly becoming unavailable, placing additional strain on the remaining infrastructure. Further investigation revealed that a core process responsible for establishing secure connections on affected servers had become overwhelmed, causing them to stop responding to requests. The company also identified a recent network configuration change that coincided with the start of the disruption and began reversing it as part of its recovery efforts. By Friday afternoon, Microsoft was continuing to restore affected servers and redirect traffic through alternative routes, but recovery remained difficult, with some restored servers becoming unresponsive again once they received traffic. Microsoft executive Charles Lamanna said on X that the outage was not the result of a cyberattack.

‘Why Don’t We All Just Stop Working?’

On X, the mood among Japanese workers ranged from outright despair to something approaching celebration. “Outlook being down is an absolute disaster,” one user complained, while another declared: “We’re screwed without Outlook.” Others, however, seemed to take a more relaxed approach to the unexpected disruption. “Can I just go back to sleep today?” one user asked, while others suggested calling it a day off or simply heading home. Some even proposed making the most of the unexpected downtime. “Why don’t we all just stop working and start drinking this afternoon?” one person joked.

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Updated On November 13, 2026