From Asia to the United States, a significant Microsoft service disruption involving platforms such as Outlook and Teams has extended into a second consecutive day, affecting users, corporations, and government operations across the globe.
The outage impacted a broad range of Microsoft 365 services connected to its Exchange Online and email infrastructure. Users reported widespread unavailability of services including Outlook, Teams, and the AI assistant Copilot.
By Friday morning, the Redmond, Washington-based technology giant announced it was making “encouraging recovery progress,” citing measurable improvements in email delivery. Nevertheless, Microsoft acknowledged that users might continue to encounter “intermittent issues” as the company pressed forward with its restoration efforts.
The company issued a formal apology to its users via X, stating that it “regret[s] the impact these outages had on those who depend on us.”
The disruption affected Microsoft’s full suite of business-oriented products, as well as those designed for personal use by individuals, students, and families. According to Downdetector, a platform that monitors technology outages, the Microsoft disruption impacted users across 74 countries and territories.
“Microsoft in a Friday the 13th moment as global outage [causes] a very bad day in Redmond,” Yorkville Ives and Co. technology analyst Dan Ives remarked in a post on X. “There will be major questions for MSFT in this global outage.”
Trying to get the problem under control
Microsoft disclosed that it explored multiple approaches to identify the root cause of the disruption and restore its servers to full functionality, employing what it described as “a measured approach to identify and repair affected infrastructure.”
The company provided ongoing recovery updates through its official Microsoft 365 Status account on X.
“We’re seeing continued recovery progress across affected regions, with broader improvements in North America, sustained improvements across much of Europe, and encouraging recovery signals in Asia Pacific,” the company stated in a post published Friday at 8:32 a.m. ET. “Some users may still experience intermittent access issues or delayed email delivery as mitigation continues across remaining affected infrastructure.”
The company further elaborated: “Our focus remains on stabilizing recovered infrastructure, completing mitigation in remaining impacted areas, and reducing delayed email queues and backlogs while we validate service consistency across connection methods.”
Microsoft confirmed that there was no indication the outage had been triggered by malicious activity or a cyberattack.
“Our teams are reviewing what happened and how we can prevent similar issues going forward,” the company stated in a post on X Friday morning.
Widespread impact
Although reports of Microsoft service disruptions had exceeded 130,000 on Thursday, Downdetector noted that the volume of complaints had begun to decline by Friday morning.
Microsoft states on its website that over 430 million people use its Microsoft 365 applications.
The outage interrupted email communication for several hours, significantly hindering productivity for numerous employees.
“It’s just challenging sending reports or things that needed to be approved,” one woman shared with CBS News Los Angeles.
Conversely, some individuals appeared to welcome the unexpected pause, with social media users posting videos expressing amusement at being temporarily freed from email obligations.
Companies worldwide report issues
OpenAI and Anthropic each reported difficulties connecting to Microsoft 365 tools, highlighting the far-reaching consequences of large-scale outages as an increasing number of users rely on artificial intelligence platforms to interface with third-party software.
U.S.-based industrial technology company Workhorse Group Inc. was compelled to postpone a conference call regarding its quarterly earnings as a direct result of the disruption.
In Australia, Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke stated on Friday that Microsoft had compared the widespread outage to the CrowdStrike incident of 2024.
Burke confirmed that he had held discussions with Microsoft’s senior executive in Australia, as well as the government’s national cybersecurity coordinator, regarding the global disruption.
“They (Microsoft) don’t believe they are dealing with a cyberattack. They believe that they are dealing in some ways (with something) similar to what we saw with respect to CrowdStrike where there is an update that has gone awry,” Burke told reporters in Sydney.
Texas-based cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike had previously attributed a widespread global technology outage in July 2024 to a software update bug that caused faulty data to be distributed to millions of customer devices, resulting in grounded flights, interrupted television broadcasts, and significant disruptions to banks, hospitals, and retailers.
Hong Kong businessman Danny Lau, who manages an aluminum firm, noted that his company’s Outlook accounts were unable to receive communications from its American clients due to the outage. He cautioned that a prolonged disruption could “impact the production timeline.”
Air India confirmed that its flight operations remained unaffected by the Microsoft outage. However, the airline temporarily redirected its email services to ensure that customer inquiries continued to reach the company without interruption, as stated in an official company release.
IndiGo, another Indian carrier, also reported disruptions to its email support services, which compromised its capacity to receive customer queries. The airline stated via X that its other support channels remained fully operational and that its flight operations were not affected.
Singapore’s Government Technology Agency confirmed that government email services had been taken offline and that it was actively collaborating with Microsoft to resolve the matter.
The Philippines’ Supreme Court issued a statement on social media acknowledging that the ongoing Microsoft 365 service outage had affected certain aspects of its operations, including the processing of email correspondence.
In Japan, Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Masanao Ozaki confirmed that the outage had affected the government’s IT infrastructure, adding that officials were “keeping a close eye on the developments.”
