Microsoft services remain disrupted after global outage

A global Microsoft outage left users unable to access email and disrupted workplace and artificial intelligence tools across dozens of countries, with the company reporting only limited progress toward restoring service by Friday morning.

The problems began at about 16:00 GMT on Thursday, when users started reporting trouble accessing Outlook, according to Al Jazeera. Within about an hour, the outage tracker Downdetector had logged reports from 74 countries and territories. Microsoft initially said it was investigating problems in the Americas, then warned that users in any region could be affected.

Outlook, Teams and Copilot were among the affected services. Some customers could not send or receive email, open certain files or view calendar details, while others continued to use Teams messaging and online meetings. Outlook users also reported trouble opening mailboxes on the web, in apps and on mobile devices, and some messages arrived late.

Microsoft has not confirmed how many people were affected. More than 430 million people use Microsoft 365 apps, according to the company’s website. The BBC reported that Downdetector received 140,000 reports of Outlook problems from 74 countries on Thursday evening. Al Jazeera reported at least 43,000 Outlook reports from 72 countries at about 07:00 GMT on Friday. Both figures reflect people who reported problems to the site, not a full count of affected users.

The disruption extended beyond Microsoft’s products. OpenAI and Anthropic reported problems involving services that rely on Microsoft integrations. OpenAI said an issue with its connections to Microsoft services had caused some tools to work unexpectedly. Government services in Singapore and Japan, communications at the Supreme Court of the Philippines, and Australia’s spy agency and federal police were also affected, Al Jazeera reported.

Across the UK, the BBC reported disruptions at GP surgeries, pharmacies, police forces and schools. Some surgeries asked patients not to send messages through their websites, while several large police forces urged people to call to make reports.

Microsoft said a number of servers had become unexpectedly unavailable, shifting traffic to the remaining servers and increasing the load on its infrastructure. The company said the elevated load was not caused by an increase in traffic. It has not published a root cause and said there was no indication of a cyberattack.

On Friday, Microsoft was rolling back a network change, though it did not say whether that change caused the outage, according to Al Jazeera. Earlier efforts to redirect traffic and apply fixes had produced limited results. By Friday morning in Europe, restored servers were failing again, Al Jazeera reported. Microsoft said it was seeing “early signs of stabilisation,” but capacity had “not yet returned to normal levels.” It has not given a timeline for full recovery.

Australian cybersecurity expert Troy Hunt told the BBC the outage showed how much people still depend on email. Beyond work, he said, it can affect communication about appointments, purchases requiring verification and access to online accounts. Paul Spain of New Zealand advisory firm Gorilla Technology told the BBC that companies with email and other services offline had practically “lost a business day.”