Microsoft says email and 365 services are recovering after a second-day global outage
Microsoft said Outlook, Teams, Copilot and other Microsoft 365 services were still recovering on Friday, more than 24 hours after a global outage that began around 16:00 GMT on Thursday and reached users in 74 countries. Overloaded servers becoming “unexpectedly available” were blamed; the company said there was no sign of a cyberattack. By midday GMT it reported shrinking email queues approaching normal levels and better delivery across Europe, North America and Asia-Pacific, while acknowledging that some services remained spotty.
The disruption, among the longest in Microsoft’s history and the second to its services this year, hit governments, businesses and individuals. Microsoft has not given a user count; in January it said it had more than 450 million Microsoft 365 commercial subscribers. The US-based company is valued at more than $3.8 trillion. Walter Pasquarelli, a strategy adviser to governments on AI and an affiliated researcher at the University of Cambridge, called it first and foremost a communication risk for businesses and government infrastructure.
Foreign banks in Taiwan were hit especially hard, a trader told Reuters, as data is emailed to overseas headquarters; faxes were used in Taipei, and Euronext told companies to phone in trades. Norway’s parliament and several ministries lost email; 80 to 90 Danish municipalities were reportedly affected. Rail operators in Germany, the United Kingdom and Canada said timetables and emailed tickets were disrupted, and the UK’s National Health Service shifted to paper records. The US House of Representatives and local governments were affected; the Department of Defense did not comment. The Pentagon was due to upgrade Microsoft infrastructure from June in a $9.7bn deal including Microsoft 365. Microsoft said it would review the incident; its stock was mostly flat on Friday as the Nasdaq slipped slightly, led by Nvidia.
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