Microsoft services fully restored after long global outage disrupted users worldwide

Services return after widespread disruption

Microsoft said early Saturday that work on the underlying problem was complete and users of Outlook, Teams and Copilot should no longer be affected. The company said recovery was gradual because of the outage’s scale and the need to keep services stable.

Users began reporting trouble with Microsoft 365 products on Thursday. Microsoft first acknowledged access problems with Exchange Online mailboxes in the Americas at 17:54 GMT, then warned the issue might be affecting Microsoft 365 worldwide.

By 04:36 on Friday, Microsoft reported only partial recovery in some regions. At 13:32, it described broader improvements in North America, sustained progress across much of Europe and encouraging recovery signals in Asia Pacific. Services had begun returning by Friday afternoon UK time, nearly 24 hours after problems emerged.

Outage affected essential work

The disruption reached more than 70 countries and affected business operations, government services and personal users. More than 430 million people use the products involved. In the UK, some NHS services, schools and police forces were affected. Cyber minister Liz Lloyd said critical frontline services, including 999 calls, experienced limited impact, and the transport network was not disrupted.

Canada’s national rail network warned that passengers might not receive email trip updates, while hospitals also reported email problems. In the United States, House of Representatives staff told Politico the outage had delayed a full day of legislative work. Singapore acknowledged system impacts, and the disruption affected work in India and access to Outlook for officials at the COP31 climate summit in Turkey.

Businesses and individuals face delays

The outage also disrupted smaller firms and individuals. South African winemaker Peter Pentz said his business had been brought to a standstill, including export communications and critical production work at his Cape West Coast winery.

Georgia, from Staffordshire in England, said the outage delayed her first house purchase, which she had expected to complete after waiting eight months. Her solicitor warned that contacting other agencies might be delayed.

Microsoft said the issue was introduced during a network capacity upgrade. It apologised to customers and partners, and said the problem was not caused by a cyber-attack or an artificial intelligence agent.

Experts warn about dependence

Experts said the incident showed how much organisations depend on cloud services from a small number of large technology providers. Rob Demain, chief executive of cybersecurity firm e2e-assure, called it a “stark reminder” of that reliance.

Matt Saunders, field chief technology officer at Adaptavist, said preparing for a similar outage would be difficult because businesses can rarely operate without tools such as Microsoft’s. He said organisations should have plans for working without those services.

Microsoft said it would release a full post-incident report after completing its review. A spokesperson said the company was deeply sorry for the disruption and took customers’ trust seriously.