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Microsoft apologized on Friday for a major global outage that disrupted businesses, public services and individual users, as Outlook and other Microsoft 365 services remained down and the company struggled to fully restore affected systems.
The company indicated that it was still working to restore full operations after the disruption began Thursday, with services gradually returning to normal across affected regions.
"We are deeply sorry for the disruption this incident has caused our customers and partners. We know the trust they place in our services and take that responsibility extremely seriously," Microsoft said.
The disruption affected Microsoft's Outlook, Teams, Copilot and other Microsoft 365 services, leaving users unable to send or receive emails, access their inboxes, manage calendars or hold virtual meetings.
Nearly 130,000 users reported problems accessing Outlook on Downdetector shortly after 1 p.m. EST on Thursday, while thousands more reported issues with Teams and Copilot. Reports also came in from dozens of countries across Asia, Europe and the Americas.
In its initial updates, Microsoft identified an overwhelmed core process responsible for establishing secure connections on affected servers.
The problem prevented parts of its infrastructure from processing requests properly, reducing available capacity and disrupting access to its services.
The outage spilled over into government operations, healthcare and financial markets. In the United Kingdom, the disruption affected the National Health Service (NHS) and London's Metropolitan Police, with some medical facilities switching to paper records and alternative IT systems.
Police operations were also affected, as the Metropolitan Police reported difficulties with online crime reporting, although its ability to respond to emergency calls remained intact.
Businesses faced similar problems. European exchange operator Euronext reported email disruptions, while British insurer Aviva activated backup arrangements for its earnings calls.
Danish shipping company Maersk warned customers of delayed updates, and Indian airlines IndiGo, Akasa Air and Air India reported disruptions to their email support services.
In Taiwan, a financial company canceled a bond repurchase transaction, while another resorted to fax machines to confirm trades.
Microsoft linked the outage to a fault during an earlier network capacity upgrade, which surfaced after a subsequent network change.
It dismissed the possibility of a cyberattack or an issue involving artificial intelligence agents, maintaining that the disruption stemmed from a technical failure.
"We have addressed the underlying issue and continue to restore service to remaining customers and regions," the company said.
Microsoft explained that it was gradually restoring services and checking their stability at each stage to ensure a reliable recovery amid high demand.
"While this took longer, it helped ensure a stable restoration," the statement read. The company pledged to release a comprehensive post-incident report after completing its review.
In its latest service update on Friday, Microsoft reported broader improvements across North America, sustained recovery in much of Europe and encouraging signs in the Asia-Pacific region. Email queues had fallen significantly and were approaching normal levels, marking progress in its efforts to restore services.
However, the recovery remained incomplete, with users of more than 20 Microsoft products and services potentially continuing to encounter errors.
Outlook users could still experience intermittent access problems and delayed email delivery, while some features of Teams, Copilot, SharePoint Online and other Microsoft 365 products remained affected.
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