Microsoft says a new patch is finally steadying its servers, but it still won't put a time on full recovery. Here's what brokers need to know
Last updated 8.47am GMT, Friday 13 November
The quick answer: Microsoft has not said when Outlook will be fully back. A new patch is steadying its servers and is being rolled out across affected regions, so service is likely to return gradually and unevenly rather than all at once. Until Microsoft marks the incident resolved, treat any recovery as provisional.
Even Microsoft can't say yet. More than 14 hours after Outlook began failing on Thursday evening, the company had still not given an estimated time for full recovery when UK offices opened on Friday 13 November.
There are signs of progress. Shortly before 7.30am UK time, Microsoft said it was seeing positive results for server stability after patching a component that handles authentication and routing on part of its infrastructure, and that it was rolling the change out more widely. By about 8am it said it was applying those fixes across the affected regions.
But it has said that before. Servers that came back overnight fell over again, and Microsoft warned that restored services could become unresponsive once more. For brokers trying to get offers, valuations and completions moving, that means planning for a patchy Friday rather than waiting for a single moment when everything switches back on.
Why the fix keeps slipping
The trouble started on Thursday afternoon US time, early evening in the UK. Downdetector said UK problem reports jumped tenfold at 5.43pm, and Outlook complaints peaked at close to 140,000 worldwide around 6pm GMT, from users in 74 countries.
Microsoft has blamed a chain reaction rather than a single broken part. Some of its servers became unexpectedly unavailable, which piled extra load onto the ones still running until those were overwhelmed too. Jake Moore, a global cyber security adviser at ESET, compared it to closing lanes on a motorway: the remaining lanes take all the traffic and everything backs up.
That explains why the night was full of false dawns. Microsoft restarted servers, redistributed traffic and blocked some types of traffic to ease the load, and some regions recovered, but the recovery didn't hold. It has said that by about 6am UK time its own redistribution of traffic was partly responsible for a fresh spike hitting its back-end servers.
The latest plan has two parts: roll out the authentication and routing patch to more servers, and set up automated systems that spot and restart servers as soon as they stop responding, to keep the service stable while the patch spreads. Microsoft has said there is no sign of a cyber attack and that it will publish a full report on the root cause once the problem is under control.
So what should brokers expect?
Based on how Microsoft has described its recovery so far, the most likely pattern is a gradual return over the day rather than a clean switch back on. Overnight, Microsoft warned that as capacity returns, "users may experience a gradual recovery as their clients reconnect". Recovery has also varied by region, which is why some users have had Teams working while their email still won't update. Microsoft has said Teams calls and meetings are largely working, but calendars and scheduling, which depend on its Exchange email service, are not.
Read next: Microsoft outage gives brokers a taste of old-school broking
It's worth remembering that Microsoft 365 suffered an outage of nearly ten hours in North America in January, and this one has already run longer. Until Microsoft marks the incident as resolved on its service status page, brokers should treat any return of email as provisional.
How the UK is coping
The impact in Britain so far looks mostly like an email problem rather than a shutdown. Several police forces, including the Metropolitan Police, Greater Manchester Police and North Yorkshire Police, warned that online reporting forms might not work and asked people to phone 101 for urgent non-emergency matters. Heathrow, Manchester and Stansted airports said their operations were running normally.
The government said it was working closely with Microsoft to assess any impact on public services and had contingency plans in place. Defence minister Luke Pollard told BBC Breakfast that, given how dependent everyone is on technology, systems need to be "more resilient" and able to recover faster.
For the mortgage market, the pressure point is Friday itself. It is traditionally the busiest day of the week for completions, and much of the paperwork that gets a purchase over the line, from funds requests to completion confirmations, moves between brokers, lenders and conveyancers by email. Lender systems and the payments that release mortgage funds don't run on Outlook, but the messages that tell everyone what's happening often do.
Read next: Conveyancing delays push average UK home transaction to 170 days
What brokers can do until it's fixed
Pick up the phone. Clients due to complete today, and anyone waiting on an offer or a valuation, will appreciate a call telling them what you know, even if the answer is that nothing has changed. The same goes for conveyancers and lender contacts: agreeing over the phone how you'll confirm key steps today is quicker than waiting for an inbox to come back.
Don't assume a quiet inbox means nothing has arrived. When Outlook does come back, messages that queued up overnight may land in a rush, or turn up late. It's worth checking with the other side before acting on anything time-sensitive, and confirming that anything you sent on Thursday evening or Friday morning was actually received.
Be extra careful about fraud. Outages are a gift to scammers, who can use a genuine IT problem as a reason why a solicitor's email address or bank details have suddenly changed, or as cover for a fake call from "Microsoft support". Clients should never send money because of an email or text, and should confirm any change of payment details by ringing their conveyancer on a number they already have.
If you're relying on personal email or messaging apps to keep things moving, be careful what goes through them. Client documents and personal data sent through unapproved accounts may fall outside your firm's data protection controls, and that can create a problem of its own once the outage is over.
Firms can track progress on Microsoft's service status page, where the business incidents are listed as EX1550543 and MO1550821, or in the Microsoft 365 admin centre if they can get into it. Reinstalling Outlook or resetting passwords won't help while the fault is on Microsoft's side.
Read next: Microsoft's Friday 13th outage continues with fraud and employee risk warnings
This is a developing story and will be updated as Microsoft provides more information.
