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Microsoft apologized to customers for the global service outage of Outlook and Teams, which affected more than 430 million users in more than 70 countries. Although it has gradually recovered, the full recovery time is still unknown.
Microsoft (Microsoft ) expressed “deep regret” for the global service outage of its Outlook and Teams products.
The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) reported that services were largely restored on Friday afternoon, about 24 hours after the problem occurred. Microsoft said it was making “encouraging progress”, but acknowledged it was unclear when services would fully return to normal.
The crash affected more than 70 countries, and everyone from corporate operations, government agencies to individual users were saved. More than 430 million people worldwide use these affected products.
Microsoft said the failure was caused by a technical issue during a “network capability upgrade” process and was unrelated to network attacks or artificial intelligence (AI) agents.
Experts say the incident is a “stark reminder” of how deeply businesses and critical services depend on a handful of large technology suppliers.
Users began reporting Thursday that they were unable to successfully log in to use Microsoft 365 products. By Friday, the far-reaching disaster had affected the Japanese government, the Philippine Supreme Court, Australian intelligence agencies and railways, hospitals and courts in North America.
In the UK, some units of the National Health Service (NHS), including family medicine clinics and hospitals, have been affected, as well as some schools and police units. British Cyber Security Minister Liz Lloyd said the incident had a “limited” impact on key frontline services such as the 999 emergency line and that traffic networks were not disrupted.
However, in Canada, the National Rail Network said passengers may not be able to receive itinerary update notifications via email, and there were also abnormalities in the email systems of hospitals across the country.
In the United States, a staff member of the House of Representatives told Politico that legislative work was delayed throughout the day because all work was dependent on Microsoft Outlook.
The Singapore government confirmed that some systems were affected; The work of many people was also disrupted due to power cut in India on Friday. Advisors and officials attending the 31st Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP31) in Antalya, Turkey were also very disappointed because they could not access the Outlook.
Microsoft first confirmed at 17:54 GMT on Thursday that users in the US were unable to access Exchange Online mailboxes, and later warned that the outage could affect Microsoft 365 services globally.
While Microsoft is investigating the issue and dispatching personnel to fix the problem, as of 4:36 a.m. Friday, Microsoft only reported a “partial recovery” in some parts of the world. As of 13:32, the tech giant said there has been a “broad recovery” in North America, “recovery continues” in most of Europe, and “encouraging signs of recovery” in the Asia-Pacific region.
Microsoft said that given the scale of the problem, it has adopted a gradual recovery approach to ensure that the service can maintain stability once it comes back online.
A Microsoft spokesperson said, “We deeply apologize for the inconvenience this incident caused our customers and partners. We recognize the trust placed in our services and take our responsibilities extremely seriously.”
Microsoft acknowledged that it is currently unable to give an “estimated time” (ETA) for services to be fully restored. The company will release a full incident investigation report after completing its internal review.
