Microsoft says efforts to fix global outage 'not going as expected' with millions impacted worldwide

Millions of users worldwide began reporting issues with Microsoft services shortly after 6pm GMT on Thursday. The outage has prevented users from accessing Outlook inboxes, sending emails, and using other Microsoft 365 applications, including Teams and the AI assistant Copilot.

The disruption has affected governments, police forces, airlines, judicial systems, and even national spy agencies across multiple regions. Microsoft has not confirmed the exact number of affected users, though more than 430 million people subscribe to Microsoft's suite of subscription services.

Company Response

Microsoft initially attributed the issue to infrastructure experiencing 'elevated load across multiple regions.' The company later revealed that servers became 'unexpectedly unavailable' during 'automated health checks,' though the specific cause remains unclear.

In its latest update on Friday morning, Microsoft reported 'marginal success' after applying a patch to Microsoft 365. The company stated it is seeing 'positive results for server stability' and is working to expand the fix to more regions.

Impact Scale

At its peak, reported problems with Outlook reached 140,000 complaints by 6pm on Thursday, more than 2,000 times the average, according to monitoring website Downdetector. By 7am on Friday, the email platform received 43,000 issue reports across 72 countries in a single hour.

Microsoft has promised to provide a detailed post-incident report once the issue is fully resolved, including the root cause and 'defence-in-depth repair items.' The company continues to work urgently to restore all affected services as pressure mounts from users worldwide.