Microsoft reports global outage affecting Outlook, Teams and Copilot
Microsoft said an hours-long outage disrupted multiple Microsoft 365 services, including Outlook, Teams and Copilot, and that no malicious activity had been detected.
Microsoft confirmed that an hours-long outage was impacting a broad range of Microsoft 365 services that rely on Exchange Online, with users reporting problems on Outlook, Teams and the AI assistant Copilot. The company said it was using a measured approach to identify and repair the affected infrastructure and had no indication that the disruption was caused by malicious activity.
Microsoft said it was treating the incident with urgency and priority until full resolution and noted that more than 430 million people use its 365 apps, affecting individual users, businesses and some government operations. OpenAI and Anthropic reported difficulties connecting with Microsoft 365 tools, highlighting the broader impact of the outage on AI platforms.
Updates posted on X indicated that engineers were still working to restore service, with early signs of stabilization and capacity improvements reported later on Friday.
The outage affected various sectors: a Toronto health-care network declared a code grey, Japan’s Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary said government IT systems were impacted, the Philippines Supreme Court reported disruptions to email responses, and Australia’s Home Affairs Minister said Microsoft did not believe a cyberattack was involved. Air India rerouted email traffic, Singapore’s Government Technology Agency worked with Microsoft to restore government email, and businesses in Hong Kong and banks in the region experienced service interruptions. Workhorse Group postponed a quarterly earnings call due to the outage. Downdetector recorded roughly 130,000 reports of Outlook access problems at the peak of the incident.