Microsoft 365 and Outlook recover after nearly two-day global outage
What's the story
Microsoft 365 had been hit by a major outage, affecting users worldwide. The disruption began on Thursday at around 1:00pm ET, leaving many unable to access their Outlook email or use certain features in Teams and Copilot. Even Exchange accounts in Apple Mail were impacted by the issue. However, Microsoft has now confirmed that the underlying issue has been resolved and services are being gradually restored for some customers.
Service disruption
Microsoft apologizes for disruption
The outage impacted businesses, schools, and governments around the world.
Microsoft apologized for the disruption, clarifying that it wasn't caused by a cyberattack or AI agents.
The company attributed the issue to a problem introduced during an earlier network capacity upgrade.
"We are deeply sorry for the disruption this incident has caused our customers and partners," Microsoft said in a statement.
Restoration strategy
Services being gradually restored
Microsoft has been gradually restoring services, validating stability at each step.
"Given the scale of demand, we restored services gradually, validating stability at each stage," the company said.
It plans to provide a full post-incident report once its review is complete.
Meanwhile, some services may still be unavailable as per Microsoft's Service Health Status page.
Widespread impact
Outage affected court proceedings, healthcare services
The outage affected organizations relying on Microsoft 365 for daily communication and operations.
In the UK, schools asked parents to contact them by phone instead of email.
The National Health Service (NHS) and ambulance services were seriously impacted, with some court proceedings also delayed.
Hospitals and rail passengers in Canada were disrupted while court services in the US were affected as well.
Business disruption
Airlines report disruptions to email support services
In India, airlines IndiGo and Akasa Air reported disruptions to their email support services due to the outage.
Other businesses, government agencies, and financial institutions around the world also faced similar problems.
Cybersecurity expert Jake Moore called the scale of disruption "absolutely massive," noting that Microsoft software is at the center of many businesses worldwide.