Microsoft 365 Mostly Restored After a 24-Hour Global Outage
Microsoft 365 is largely back online after a roughly 24-hour global outage that knocked out Outlook, Teams, Copilot and other cloud services used by businesses, governments and tens of millions of people. Reports first appeared on Downdetector just after 12 pm ET on Thursday on the US East Coast. Microsoft initially said it was investigating a North America–limited incident; the disruption then spread to more than 70 countries.
The company has repeatedly said the cause was not a cyberattack and has also ruled out AI or AI agents. A spokesperson described “broad recovery and stability,” attributing the incident to a technical fault from an earlier network capacity upgrade that surfaced after a recent network change. Microsoft says it has addressed the underlying issue while still restoring remaining customers and regions, and it has pledged a full post-incident report once the review is complete.
As systems return, inboxes may fill with delayed mail. Microsoft increased email queue time to 48 hours so messages attempted during the outage can still be delivered. Independent researcher Jonathan Leitschuh warned users to expect a flood of notifications as subsystems catch up. Impact already includes government disruptions from Japan to the United States, airline customer-communications problems, and interruptions at law enforcement, emergency services and hospitals—underscoring how much daily operations now depend on a single vendor’s cloud.
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