Microsoft is continuing efforts to restore its services on Friday after a global outage that began on Thursday disrupted Outlook, Teams and other Microsoft 365 applications, affecting businesses, government agencies and public services across more than 70 countries.
The disruption left millions of users unable to send or receive emails, access files or use certain calendar functions. Microsoft’s Copilot AI assistant was affected, while some users reported problems with online meetings and other workplace tools.
Downdetector recorded almost 140,000 reports of Outlook problems at around 18:00 GMT on Thursday, with reports spanning 74 countries and territories. The full number of affected users has not been confirmed.
Microsoft attributed the incident to connectivity problems after a number of servers became unexpectedly unavailable, placing additional pressure on the remaining infrastructure. The company said there was no indication that the outage resulted from malicious or cyber activity.
Charles Lamanna, Microsoft’s executive vice-president of Copilot, Agents and Platform, said on X that there was no evidence of a cyber incident causing the disruption.
In an update on Friday, Microsoft reported positive results from traffic optimisation measures and efforts to increase server capacity, although it warned that it had not yet achieved sustained recovery across affected regions.
The outage has affected public services internationally, including government departments in Australia, Japan and Singapore. In Japan, deputy chief cabinet secretary Masanao Ozaki said government IT infrastructure had experienced disruptions, forcing some officials to produce physical copies of documents.
In the UK, disruption to the National Health Service’s email system is expected to delay some prescriptions. The National Pharmacy Association said the outage was affecting communication between pharmacies, GP practices and patients, particularly where pharmacists needed to contact doctors to clarify prescriptions.
Businesses have reported operational and financial consequences. Swiss luxury group Richemont delayed publication of its half-year results, while US electric vehicle manufacturer Workhorse Group postponed its quarterly earnings call until Monday, 16 November.
Airlines including India’s IndiGo and Akasa Air reported delays to email support services, although neither reported disruption to flight operations. Logistics company Sagawa Express in Japan suspended same-day reservations for luggage storage at railway stations and airports.
Microsoft said it would publish a full account of the root cause and remedial measures in a post-incident report once services had been restored.
