A major technical outage disrupted several Microsoft services worldwide, affecting users of Outlook, Teams, Microsoft 365 and other digital tools as the company worked to restore its systems.
The disruption began on Thursday and continued into Friday, affecting users across multiple countries and causing problems with email, workplace communication and cloud-based services.
Outlook appeared to suffer the most significant disruption. At the height of the outage, more than 130,000 users in the United States reported problems with the email service through Downdetector. However, the actual number of affected users may have been higher.
The outage also disrupted parts of Microsoft Teams, Microsoft 365 and the company’s AI assistant, Copilot. In addition, users reported issues with services including OneDrive and SharePoint.
Servers Under Pressure
Microsoft said the problem emerged after a large number of servers unexpectedly went offline. As a result, the remaining servers faced increased pressure as they handled additional traffic.
The company initially described the issue as increased strain on its infrastructure. However, it later said the problem did not stem from a general rise in user demand.
Instead, Microsoft focused on technical problems affecting parts of its infrastructure and automated systems used to check server health.
The company has tested several solutions and worked to bring affected servers back online. However, Microsoft said some of its changes had not produced the expected results, slowing the recovery process.
No Signs of Cyberattack
Microsoft said it had found no indication that a cyberattack or other malicious activity caused the outage.
Charles Lamanna, Microsoft’s executive vice president for Copilot, Agents and Platform, said the company had no evidence suggesting that the disruption resulted from malicious or cyber activity.
Meanwhile, the outage also affected some services and integrations that depend on Microsoft’s infrastructure. Reports indicated that OpenAI and Anthropic experienced problems with tools connected to Microsoft services.
The disruption once again highlighted how heavily businesses and institutions depend on major cloud service providers. When problems affect a company’s core infrastructure, the impact can quickly spread across email, communication, file-sharing and other essential digital tools.
Microsoft has continued its recovery efforts, although it has not provided a firm timeline for the full restoration of all affected services.