Microsoft 365 outage shows broad recovery after more than 24 hours of disruption
Microsoft reported that its 365 services, including Outlook, Teams and Copilot, are gradually stabilising following a worldwide outage that began on Thursday.
Microsoft said its 365 platform is entering a "broad recovery" after more than 24 hours of service interruption that affected Outlook, Teams, Exchange Online and the AI assistant Copilot. The company explained that it restored services gradually to validate stability at each stage, which extended the recovery time but helped ensure a stable restoration. A full post-incident report will be released once the review is complete.
In an update posted at 11 a.m. Eastern, Microsoft noted that there was no evidence of malicious activity linked to the incident and that the outage was caused by a number of servers becoming unexpectedly unavailable, which strained the remaining infrastructure. The firm said it was prioritising the reduction of delayed email backlogs and that email queues were approaching normal levels.
While service availability was improving across North America, Europe and the Asia-Pacific region, Microsoft warned that some users might still experience intermittent access issues or delayed email delivery as mitigation continues.
The British government said it was working closely with Microsoft to assess any impact on public services and that contingency plans were in place. Police forces reported an inability to receive online crime reports, urging the public to call emergency responders for urgent matters. The National Pharmacy Association warned of possible prescription delays due to disruptions in the National Health Service’s email system.
In Australia, Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke said the disruption was comparable to the 2024 CrowdStrike outage that stemmed from a faulty Windows update. He confirmed discussions with senior Microsoft officials and the national cybersecurity coordinator.
Air India and IndiGo indicated that flight operations remained unaffected, though IndiGo experienced email support disruptions. The Philippines’ Supreme Court and Japan’s Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Masanao Ozaki both acknowledged operational impacts and said alternative communication tools were being used.
Microsoft reiterated its commitment to restoring full service stability and will share detailed findings and defensive actions after the incident is fully mitigated.