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Microsoft Outage Affecting Outlook, Teams, and Copilot Improves After 24 Hours
· Confirmed
In Short: As of Friday afternoon, Microsoft reported encouraging recovery progress in Europe and improvement in North America, according to BBC and Newsweek.
Microsoft Outage: Outlook, Teams and Copilot Disrupted Worldwide. WSB-TV
Microsoft reported on Friday that its services, including Outlook, Teams, and Copilot, were improving but not fully restored after a mass outage that began around 16:00 GMT on Thursday and affected users in 74 countries. The company attributed the issue to overloaded servers that became 'unexpectedly available' during a network capacity upgrade, according to Al Jazeera.
The outage disrupted Microsoft 365 services used by global businesses, institutions, and individuals, impacting email, collaboration, and artificial intelligence tools. Microsoft did not specify the number of affected users, but the company reported in January that it had more than 450 million Microsoft 365 commercial subscribers, according to Al Jazeera.
Microsoft announced that email queues were significantly reduced and approaching normal levels, indicating progress in resolving the issue. The company extended the 'timeout window' to 48 hours to help protect delayed messages as delivery catches up, as reported by BBC, TVC News, and CNBC.
The outage particularly affected foreign banks and financial institutions in Taiwan, where data is emailed to overseas headquarters through Microsoft’s systems, a trader told Reuters. Schools, GPs, businesses, and government departments in the UK were also hit, as reported by The Guardian.
Microsoft issued an apology for the outage, which began at 11:17 AM EST on Thursday, according to incident logs republished by the University of Pennsylvania's Microsoft incident reports page. The company said the issue was not related to a cyberattack or AI, as reported by The Verge.
As of Friday afternoon, Microsoft reported encouraging recovery progress in Europe and improvement in North America, according to BBC and Newsweek. The company said it had resolved the underlying technical issue and was working to restore affected services, as reported by TVC News.
Microsoft's services, valued at more than $3.8 trillion, are crucial for global communications and operations. The outage, which first racked up over 100,000 reports on Downdetector within an hour of Microsoft's report, has raised concerns about reliance on major tech firms, as reported by Abcnews and Windowsreport.
Australian cyber-security expert Troy Hunt told the BBC that the outage could have far-reaching consequences, highlighting the importance of robust backup systems and contingency plans.
Background
A Microsoft outage affecting over 430 million users worldwide has raised concerns about reliance on major tech firms.
What's confirmed
- Microsoft reported that “email queues [are] significantly reduced and approaching normal levels”.
- Services including Outlook, Teams and AI assistant Copilot were reported by users to be down.
- Microsoft issued an apology Friday for a wide-ranging outage that shut down Outlook and other Microsoft 365 products, as the company worked to restore service nearly 24 hours after connectivity problems began.
- Microsoft said the outage was not a cyber-security incident and was caused by a technical issue.
- Microsoft said service availability was improving, although some users could continue to experience intermittent access issues and delayed email delivery as recovery efforts progressed.
- In a statement posted on X, Microsoft said the disruption was caused by a technical issue linked to an earlier network capacity upgrade, which surfaced following a recent network change.
- Earlier, Microsoft said it would be extending the "timeout window" to 48 hours "to help protect delayed messages as delivery catches up".
- More than 430 million people use Microsoft 365 apps according to Microsoft's website.
- As of Friday afternoon, Microsoft said it had seen "encouraging recovery progress" in Europe and improvement in North America.
- The outage was affecting a wide range of Microsoft 365 offerings that interact with its Exchange Online and email services.
What's still developing
- Flora Hamilton, executive director of the Small Business Charter, said the outage was a "stark reminder" of how much firms "rely on digital systems" - like Microsoft Outlook - "to keep their operations running".
- Microsoft outage hits UK hospitals, GPs, schools and police Tell us: have you been affected by the outage?
- Microsoft is reporting widespread improvements to its services after a global outage took them offline on Thursday, disrupting communications and work at schools, government agencies and offices around the world.
- “We’re observing sustained improvements in service availability,” Microsoft said in a statement posted to its status dashboard on Friday morning.
- SCOTT DETROW, HOST: Microsoft says it is seeing broad recovery and stability following a massive outage of its Outlook email system and other applications yesterday.
- Watch: What we know so far about the Microsoft outage A major Microsoft outage has impacted schools, healthcare systems, businesses, courts and governments around the world.
- ChatGPT-maker OpenAI said it was investigating an issue affecting its connections to Microsoft's services, which had caused some tools to not work as expected.
- Microsoft was pursuing alternative recovery measures on November 13 after attempts to stabilise its services failed to deliver the expected improvement.
- Microsoft is scrambling to recover from a massive global outage, just weeks after offering voluntary buyouts to more than a quarter of its workforce.
- SEATTLE - Microsoft is speaking out one day after a widespread outage, which left thousands of users unable to access email and cloud tools.
- The company blamed "service infrastructure in the North America region" that wasn't "processing traffic as expected" for users of its hugely popular services Tens of thousands of Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft 365 users said they were dealing with outages on Thursday, Jan. 22, including issues sending email, as the company worked to fix its "service infrastructure in North America."
- At the same time, Microsoft stock is inching lower as the outage interrupts Outlook and Teams.
Sources
- BBClink
- Cnbclink
- Fox Businesslink
- Human Resources Directorlink
- MacRumorslink
- Mashablelink
- Mid-Daylink
- NPRlink
- Rnzlink
- TVC Newslink
- Technologymagazinelink
- The Guardianlink
- The Indian Expresslink
- The New York Timeslink
- The Vergelink
- Windowsreportlink
- WSB-TV — video link
- KCENNews — video link
- WSB-TV — video link
- CNN — video link
- InfoBuzz Tech — video link
- DNAIndiaNews — video link