Microsoft Global Outage Disrupts Outlook, Teams and Copilot Services for Over 12 Hours

The outage started on Thursday and extended into Friday, affecting customers in different parts of the world, including the United States and several Asia-Pacific countries. Among the reported problems were difficulties accessing email accounts and sending or receiving messages.

Microsoft revealed that efforts to restore the affected infrastructure had achieved only limited progress. Some servers that were brought back online became unresponsive again after normal traffic resumed, prompting technical teams to explore alternative recovery measures.

The disruption affected individuals and organisations across multiple sectors, with outage-monitoring platform Downdetector recording more than 130,000 reports relating to Outlook problems in the United States at the height of the incident.

Microsoft's Exchange Online platform, which supports Outlook's email services, was among the systems affected. Several connected workplace applications also experienced interruptions, although the company indicated that services operating independently of Exchange Online remained available.

Users in countries such as India, Australia and Japan also reported difficulties. The disruption affected businesses and government institutions, while OpenAI and Anthropic experienced problems with certain services that depend on Microsoft connectors.

Microsoft has ruled out a cyberattack as the suspected cause, stating that its investigations had found no evidence of malicious activity behind the incident.

The company initially attributed the problem to increased pressure on certain parts of its infrastructure and reduced server availability. It clarified that the disruption was not caused by unusually high overall demand but by a decline in the number of servers available to handle traffic.

Technical teams have been working to restore stability by adjusting network traffic distribution and restarting affected servers. However, these interventions have not yet resulted in a lasting recovery.

Microsoft said it was considering additional technical solutions while continuing investigations into the underlying problem.

The company has apologised to affected customers, but its latest communication did not provide a definite timeline for the complete restoration of all disrupted services.

The incident highlights the extent to which businesses and organisations depend on cloud-based platforms for everyday communication, email management and workplace operations.

Source: Nehanda Radio