Microsoft restores services after global outage disrupts operations in over 70 countries

Microsoft on Saturday said it had fully restored services following a massive global outage that disrupted its Microsoft 365 applications for hours, affecting governments, courts, healthcare facilities, airlines, banks and businesses across more than 70 countries and territories.

"We have completed our efforts to address the underlying issue of the incident and restored service to the remaining impacted customers and regions," the company said in an update on X.

The disruption affected several widely used Microsoft services, including Outlook, Teams and its artificial intelligence assistant Copilot, leaving users unable to access emails, communication platforms and other essential workplace tools.

According to outage-tracking website Downdetector, reports of service disruptions emerged from 74 countries and territories within an hour of the first problems appearing around midday Thursday in the United States.

The full scale of the disruption remained unclear. Microsoft said on its website that more than 430 million people used Microsoft 365 applications, while in January it reported having over 450 million paid commercial subscriptions to its 365 services.

𝗡𝗲𝘁𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸 𝗶𝘀𝘀𝘂𝗲 𝗯𝗹𝗮𝗺𝗲𝗱

Microsoft attributed the outage to a technical problem associated with an earlier network capacity upgrade that surfaced following a subsequent network change.

The Redmond, Washington-based company apologised on Friday for the widespread disruptions and clarified that there was no indication of malicious activity.

It specifically ruled out a cyberattack or artificial intelligence agents as the cause.

The company said the incident "was introduced by an issue during an earlier network capacity upgrade that surfaced" following a recent network change.

Microsoft engineers worked to restore services gradually, but recovery took longer than initially anticipated.

During the restoration process, the company reported problems affecting Exchange Online mailboxes, including a failure that caused several servers to become "unexpectedly unavailable" during automated checks.

Users across the world reported difficulties sending and receiving emails through Outlook, while others were unable to load their inboxes.

A series of updates posted by Microsoft 365 on X indicated that engineers continued working to stabilise services as disruptions extended into Friday.

𝗖𝗼𝘂𝗿𝘁𝘀 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗵𝗲𝗮𝗹𝘁𝗵𝗰𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗵𝗶𝘁

The outage disrupted essential public services in several countries, highlighting the dependence of critical infrastructure on Microsoft's digital platforms.

In Britain, a trial in Manchester was halted after technical problems affected court proceedings.

Judge Maurice Greene sent jurors home, saying the delays illustrated the risks associated with the judiciary's reliance on technology.

The British government said it was working closely with Microsoft to assess the impact on public services while maintaining contingency arrangements to minimise disruption.

British police reported difficulties receiving crime reports online and advised people to use telephone services for urgent matters.

In the United States, law enforcement agencies also experienced disruptions. The sheriff's office in Colorado's Arapahoe County reported that online bond payments were affected.

Healthcare services faced similar difficulties.

Britain's National Pharmacy Association warned that patients could experience delays in obtaining medicines as the outage affected communication systems used by pharmacies and healthcare providers.

The disruption also affected the National Health Service, potentially preventing doctors from emailing prescriptions to pharmacies.

"Please bear with your pharmacy teams today, where waits may be longer than normal, and there may be delays to some prescriptions," an association spokesperson said.

𝗚𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗿𝗻𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘀 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗯𝗮𝗻𝗸𝘀 𝗮𝗳𝗳𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗲𝗱

Government agencies in Japan, Singapore, Australia, Greece and Norway reported disruptions to some operations, including email communications involving ministries and public departments.

Businesses also struggled with interrupted communication systems, particularly those relying heavily on Microsoft Outlook for international correspondence.

Hong Kong businessperson Danny Lau, who operates an aluminium company, said his firm could not receive updates from customers in the United States through Outlook.

Several banks in Hong Kong also reported service disruptions.

The outage extended to artificial intelligence platforms that depend on Microsoft's software ecosystem.

OpenAI and Anthropic reported problems connecting with Microsoft 365 tools, demonstrating how disruptions at a major technology provider could affect services operated by other companies.

𝗗𝗶𝗴𝗶𝘁𝗮𝗹 𝗱𝗲𝗽𝗲𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝗾𝘂𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗲𝗱

The widespread outage renewed concerns about the concentration of essential digital infrastructure in the hands of a small number of technology companies.

Some lawmakers outside the United States argued that the disruption highlighted the risks of excessive dependence on American technology providers.

Jeremy Singer, a professor at the University of Glasgow's School of Computing Science, said the interruption had effectively brought many workplaces to a standstill.

"With no emails coming or going, many office workers feel like they are having a virtual snow day," Singer said.

However, he warned that the incident raised broader questions about the resilience of modern technology systems.

"This problem serves to emphasise the dependence we have built on one company's digital infrastructure, and may lead us to question whether we need more resilience in our IT ecosystem," he added.

Although Microsoft confirmed that services had been restored, the incident underscored the cascading consequences of technical failures affecting widely used cloud-based platforms and the institutions that depend on them.