During the large-scale Microsoft 365 outage that began in the early hours of November 13, Japan time, some companies and individuals who lost access to email switched to fax. One case reported by the Yomiuri Shimbun involved a 25-year-old trading company employee who said he used fax for the first time in his life. Meanwhile, the government backup methods that Digital Minister Toshiharu Furukawa listed at a press conference were phone calls, chat tools and text messages, and the remarks as reported make no mention of fax. In addition, a January 2024 survey by the Communications and Information network Association of Japan (CIAJ) found that 40.1% of workers in Japan use fax at work, compared with 50.7% in Germany. Fax clearly proved useful this time, but treating that as evidence that Japan is especially dependent on fax calls for caution.
People who switched to fax during the Microsoft 365 outage, including one who used it for the first time
According to ITmedia and Techno Edge, Microsoft announced an Exchange Online connectivity problem at 2:54 a.m. on November 13, Japan time, and around 3:26 a.m. posted a notice that the problem affected Microsoft 365 as a whole. Outlook, Teams, SharePoint Online and other services were affected, leaving users unable to send or receive email or access various services. According to an Associated Press report, the outage lasted more than 24 hours, and Microsoft posted on X in the early morning of the 14th, U.S. time, that recovery was complete. The company explained that a problem tied to past network capacity upgrades surfaced after a recent network change, and said the outage was not caused by a cyberattack.
The outage forced some users to switch to fax. The Yomiuri Shimbun described a woman in her 20s working as a freelancer in the Kansai region who normally sends documents to clients through Outlook and instead faxed them from a convenience store near her home. A 25-year-old male employee at a Tokyo trading company switched from email to fax to send order details and quotes to clients. He said, "It was the first time in my life I'd used fax," and recalled, "I had to call to confirm it had arrived, and it was really exhausting."
Some companies also urged a switch to fax. On the 13th, Nip Corporation told business partners that Outlook and other services were unavailable and asked them to contact its sales offices or sales representatives by phone or fax until service was restored. The Japan Times also cited posts saying the outage was a reminder of the strength of phone and fax, and one saying a regular report normally sent as a PDF would be sent by fax instead. However, there are no statistics showing how many companies or users actually switched to fax.
Fax over ordinary phone lines could sidestep this outage because it uses a communication path independent of Microsoft 365. Unlike email routed through Exchange Online, conventional fax sends an image of a document to the recipient's machine over the telephone network, so it can work unaffected by a Microsoft 365 failure. On the other hand, the recipient needs a fax number and receiving equipment, and even if a fax arrives, whether the other party has read it must be confirmed separately. That is why the 25-year-old trading company employee phoned to confirm receipt. The case of the woman who sent hers from a convenience store also shows that a way to use fax without owning a machine at home remained available locally.
Workplace fax use: 40.1% in Japan versus 50.7% in Germany
Fax is often cited as a symbol of Japan's lag in digitization. International comparisons, however, do not support the picture of Japan as uniquely fax-dependent.
In January 2024, CIAJ surveyed employed people aged 20 to 69 in Japan and Germany about their use of fax. In Japan, the survey ran January 12–14: 18.5% of respondents said they use fax at work "daily" and 21.6% said they use it "occasionally." The number of employed respondents was 4,689, and the two figures together give a usage rate of 40.1%. In Germany, the survey ran January 17–19: 16.6% said they use it "daily" and 34.1% "occasionally," for a total of 50.7%. The German screening survey had 2,069 respondents.
The difference between the two countries shows up mainly in frequency of use. The share of daily users is slightly higher in Japan (18.5%) than in Germany (16.6%). But the share of occasional users is far higher in Germany (34.1%) than in Japan (21.6%). In other words, more people in Germany use fax as needed. That said, the wording of the question differed slightly, with Japan's asking about "your employer" and Germany's about "your work." The survey also asked about individuals' usage, and does not directly measure corporate fax adoption or operational dependence.
In the Japanese survey, 40.9% of respondents also said they have "never used" fax at their workplace. This asked about experience at their current employer, not the share of people who have never used fax in their lives. Even so, given that about four in ten people have no experience using fax at work, it is not surprising that some employees used fax for the first time during this outage.
Fax use in Japan has continued to decline since. In CIAJ's fiscal 2025 domestic survey, published in May 2026, the share of people using fax for work was 37.9%. That is down 2.2 points from 40.1% in fiscal 2023 and 11.8 points from 49.7% in fiscal 2020. For a direct comparison with Germany, however, it is appropriate to use the January 2024 figures, when the survey timing matched.
Comparing CIAJ's German survey with the domestic one, fax use was lower in Japan than in Germany, at least between the two countries surveyed. But the comparison covers only one other country, so it cannot be concluded that Japan's fax use is low by global standards. Nor can the mere fact that fax was used during this outage show that Japanese workplaces depend on it more than those in other countries.
Fax kept for crisis management, yet absent from the government's list of backups
The Japanese government had long indicated a policy of keeping fax for specific uses such as crisis management, rather than abolishing it entirely.
At a press conference on June 15, 2021, Taro Kono, then minister for administrative reform, called for switching routine communications that rely on fax by custom over to email. He explained, however, that fax would be kept as a backup for disaster prevention and crisis management when radio signals do not get through. At a July 2 press conference that year, he also said fax used as a crisis-management backup and for receiving applications and opinions from outside parties "has to be kept."
In the same year, 2021, the Digital Agency began offering the Government Solution Service (GSS), a common work environment for the government. According to the National Personnel Authority, about 53,000 people were using it as of February 2026, and the plan is to expand it to about 280,000. GSS uses Microsoft 365 for email, web conferencing and more.
The November 13 outage also affected this shared government platform. Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Masanao Ozaki said at a press conference that morning that GSS had also been hit and that Outlook and other services were unavailable across ministries and agencies. Minister Furukawa also said at a press conference, "As emergency measures we have secured multiple means such as phone, chat tools and text messages, and for the time being we are using them so that government operations are not disrupted." Fax was not included in this explanation.
According to Jiji Press, however, ministries and agencies continued work by doing things like preparing paper documents, and one government official said, "Kasumigaseki is in considerable chaos." The Yomiuri Shimbun also reported that the Japan Meteorological Agency and the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism could not use email and relied on chat services and phone calls to communicate internally and externally. Furukawa's explanation, though, included "and so on" as an illustrative list, and it has not been confirmed that fax went unused.
In 2021, the main reason given for keeping fax was as a backup when radio signals do not get through. The current incident, by contrast, was a failure of a Microsoft cloud service, and other means such as phone calls and text messages remained available. Because the type of failure differs from what was anticipated, the government may have prioritized other methods, but the reason fax was not mentioned at the press conference has not been made clear.
Was fax an effective backup? Examining how it is actually used
It is also an important fact that fax actually worked as an alternative during this outage. When email became unavailable, some people were able to keep working because there were still business partners to whom they could send order forms and quotes by fax. Some companies, like Nip Corporation, formally asked business partners to contact them by fax. A means of communication not normally used can still matter in an emergency.
In fact, fax use remains high in some industries. In CIAJ's 2024 survey, usage in Japan was 63.6% in real estate and housing, 54.7% in government offices and organizations, and 52.8% in finance and insurance. All exceed the national figure of 40.1%. In Germany, by comparison, finance and insurance was high at 68.8%, while government offices and organizations stood at 44.1%. For government offices and organizations alone, fax use is higher in Japan than in the same sector in Germany.
These differences by industry show that fax is not merely a relic of the past but remains built into some business operations today. That fax could be used during this outage is also because such an environment remains. However, the reported cases include an employee using fax for the first time and a user sending from a convenience store. Whether people got through the outage because fax is deeply rooted in daily work, or because it served as an alternative not normally used, differs from case to case.
There is one more point to check regarding the government: whether the fax that was to be kept for crisis management under the 2021 policy was actually used during this Microsoft 365 outage. The Digital Agency's page for the November 13 press conference currently says the summary of the conference "will be posted later." If the summary or later verification materials on the GSS outage are published, more detailed explanations of the alternative methods may become available.
Future CIAJ surveys will also be a useful reference for workplace fax use. Domestic usage has fallen from 49.7% in fiscal 2020 to 37.9% in fiscal 2025, and the share of people who use fax only when needed is changing along with that of daily users. If Japan and Germany are compared again, survey timing, question wording and respondent conditions will need to be aligned for the evaluation.
Microsoft's Charles Lamanna has posted that a post-incident report on the outage will be published "soon." The report is expected to explain the cause of the outage and the path to recovery, but for which communication methods government agencies used to continue work, the Digital Agency's explanation will be the basis for judgment. What this case confirms is that fax was an effective alternative for some users. It is important to treat how it was actually used separately from Japan's overall dependence on fax.