'Recovery underway, some users may still face issues': Microsoft on global outage

Microsoft on Friday said its services were gradually recovering from a major global outage that disrupted Outlook, Teams, Copilot and other Microsoft 365 applications for more than 15 hours, but warned that some users could continue experiencing difficulties.

The technology giant said recovery measures had been completed in several parts of the Asia-Pacific region, while improvements were also being observed in Europe and North America.

However, the company cautioned that the restoration process was not yet complete and that intermittent connectivity problems, delayed email delivery and difficulties accessing mailboxes could persist.

The disruption, which began on Thursday, affected businesses, government departments, educational institutions and individual users across multiple countries, including India.

Microsoft said engineers were continuing to restore affected infrastructure and clear accumulated email backlogs as services gradually returned to normal.

𝗥𝗲𝗰𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘆 𝗲𝗳𝗳𝗼𝗿𝘁𝘀 𝗴𝗮𝗶𝗻 𝗺𝗼𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘂𝗺

The company reported improvements in mailbox availability and email delivery after implementing technical changes to stabilise its infrastructure.

Microsoft said its teams had been working to restore affected servers, increase system capacity and redirect traffic to functioning infrastructure.

Earlier attempts to resolve the disruption had produced limited results, with some recovery measures failing to deliver sustained improvements.

Subsequent technical adjustments, including patches to authentication and routing components, showed encouraging signs of improved server stability.

Despite the progress, Microsoft did not provide a definite timeline for the complete restoration of all affected services.

𝗡𝗼 𝗲𝘃𝗶𝗱𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝗰𝘆𝗯𝗲𝗿𝗮𝘁𝘁𝗮𝗰𝗸

Microsoft said it had found no indication that the outage resulted from malicious activity or a cybersecurity breach.

Charles Lamanna, Microsoft's executive vice-president of Copilot, Agents and Platform, acknowledged the disruption and said the company was working to resolve the problems.

He said there was no indication that malicious or cyber activity had caused the incident.

The company had earlier identified unexpectedly unavailable servers and increased pressure on its remaining infrastructure as factors contributing to connectivity problems.

However, the precise underlying cause had not been conclusively established. Microsoft said it would release a detailed post-incident report after the disruption was resolved.

𝗗𝗶𝘀𝗿𝘂𝗽𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀 𝗮𝗰𝗿𝗼𝘀𝘀 𝟳𝟰 𝗰𝗼𝘂𝗻𝘁𝗿𝗶𝗲𝘀

According to outage-tracking platform Downdetector, problems were reported across 74 countries and territories within an hour as the disruption spread globally.

Users complained of difficulties accessing Outlook mailboxes, sending and receiving emails, logging into Microsoft accounts and using workplace applications.

Some Microsoft Teams functions, particularly those linked to calendars and email services, were affected, while Copilot users experienced problems accessing conversations and work-related information.

In India, the disruption affected business communications, with IndiGo reporting problems with its email-based customer support services.

The widespread outage also disrupted operations at government agencies, educational institutions and businesses in several countries.

Microsoft said it would continue monitoring the recovery process and implementing additional measures until all affected services were fully restored.