Microsoft says it is making progress in restoring Outlook, Teams, Copilot and other Microsoft 365 services after a global outage that entered its second day. The Redmond, Washington technology company reported improvements in North America, much of Europe and the Asia-Pacific region, but has not given a full recovery timeline. Users have faced email delivery delays and access problems, and the company has said that intermittent issues may persist even as service improves.
The outage began at about 1 p.m. Eastern time on Thursday. Microsoft has said there is no sign of malicious activity and that the disruption is not a cyberattack. The root cause has not been confirmed, although the Australian government has likened the fault to a faulty update, comparing it to the CrowdStrike incident. Microsoft reported in January that it had more than 450 million paid commercial Microsoft 365 subscriptions, a figure that illustrates how many organizations depend on the platform. The total number of people affected remains unclear.
The effects have reached public institutions as well as private firms. In Britain, a trial in Manchester was halted and police were unable to take online crime reports. Disruption to NHS email may delay prescriptions, and the government has said contingency plans exist to deal with that risk. In Norway, several ministries were affected, and no restoration timeline has been given. Greece reported that its ministries were hit but not seriously hampered, according to the country's digital governance minister.
In Germany, businesses were widely affected, although the federal government does not use the Microsoft cloud, so its own operations were not dependent on the service. In Australia, the Home Affairs minister spoke with Microsoft about the disruption. In Hong Kong, some banks were disrupted, and an aluminum company reported delays in sending customer updates. In India, IndiGo's email support was disrupted, while Air India rerouted its email, and its flights were unaffected. Singapore, the Philippines Supreme Court and the Japanese government also reported email or IT disruptions.
The outage has also reached technology companies that rely on Microsoft tools. OpenAI and Anthropic reported problems connecting to Microsoft 365 tools, and Workhorse Group delayed its quarterly earnings call. For organizations that depend on Microsoft 365 for daily communication, the episode is a reminder of how concentrated email and collaboration infrastructure has become. Businesses and public bodies are likely to be watching closely for confirmation that normal service has resumed.
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