Millions of people worldwide lost access to Microsoft 365 services on Thursday, bringing email, messaging and cloud tools to a standstill.
Users Across 70 Countries Lose Access to Microsoft Cloud Services
The disruption began on Thursday, as users across more than 70 countries found themselves locked out of Exchange Online mailboxes, Teams meetings, and documents.
Tracking sites recorded a sharp surge in error reports as the incident expanded from the Americas to Europe and the Asia-Pacific region.
The outage also impacted users in South Africa, India, and New Zealand. The cloud suite includes Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Teams, SharePoint Online, Microsoft Copilot 365, Microsoft Planner, and Microsoft Exchange Online, alongside the Defender cybersecurity service. Third-party platforms connected to the infrastructure, including OpenAI and Anthropic, also reported connection problems.
In Japan, Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Masanao Ozaki said that the disruption impacted government IT infrastructure and that officials were monitoring developments. The Philippines’ Supreme Court reported that the incident affected its email responses and other operations.
In Australia, Tony Burke said Microsoft had likened the widespread outage to the CrowdStrike software incident of 2024. Burke said that he had consulted with the company’s top executive in Australia and the government’s national cybersecurity coordinator regarding the disruption.
They (Microsoft) don’t believe they are dealing with a cyberattack. They believe that they are dealing in some ways (with something) similar to what we saw with respect to CrowdStrike where there is an update that has gone awry.
Tony Burke
Engineers Struggle With Server Health Checks
Microsoft reported that a core process on affected servers became overwhelmed and caused capacity loss. The company explained that servers began failing automated health checks and dropping offline due to elevated system loads rather than increased traffic. The company said that no evidence of malicious activity had been found associated with the incident.
Engineers attempted to isolate infrastructure, restart affected components, and redistribute traffic across worldwide data centers. Many restored servers became unresponsive again almost immediately upon receiving incoming traffic.
“Our teams are reviewing what happened and how we can prevent similar issues going forward,” said Microsoft in an update on X.
Public and Private Sectors Use Alternative Communication Methods
Public institutions and private enterprises adapted their daily operations as the outage lasted for more than 21 hours. In the UK, the government announced it was working closely with Microsoft. Private firms also altered their workflows. Pharmaceutical company Taisho handled orders by phone, while shipping company Sagawa Express could not accept online reservations at airports and railway stations.
In New Mexico, state agencies, hospitals, and utility companies turned to alternative communication methods. Presbyterian Hospital maintained normal patient care by using backup channels, while state workers relied on phone calls and in-person discussions. Both the Public Service Company of New Mexico and New Mexico Gas Co. employed backup communication instead of Outlook.
“We in the state government are used to having to pivot,” said Lauren Dodd Thorp, spokesperson for the state’s Information Technology Department. “So that’s what we’re doing.”
Engineers Restore Services and Reduce Backlogs
By Friday morning, tracking metrics showed connectivity losses dropping off substantially as engineers achieved early stabilization.
“Some users may still experience intermittent access issues or delayed email delivery as mitigation continues across remaining affected infrastructure,” said Microsoft in a statement.
Earlier coverage: Global Microsoft Outage Stretches Into Second Day