The global outage affecting Microsoft services reverberated around the world on Friday, upending services relied upon by millions of people. Parents struggled to contact their children’s schools, some government services faltered and many office workers could not access email as the disruptions stretched into a second day.
Microsoft said in updates Friday that it was making progress in fixing the problem. By 10 a.m. Eastern, it said there had been “sustained improvements” in service.
The company did not specify what had caused the outage, but appeared to rule out a cyberattack, saying it had seen “no evidence of malicious activity associated with this incident.”
A range of Microsoft tools were affected, including the email manager Outlook, the workplace messaging and video calling app Teams and the A.I. assistant Copilot. By early Friday, Microsoft said that the core functions of Teams and Copilot were online.
The outage made clear the extent to which many organizations depend on the company, which said in January that it had 450 million paid subscriptions to its Microsoft 365 suite of programs, which were the worst affected. Corporate offices, government agencies and other services in dozens of countries were forced to adapt as workers struggled to complete the everyday tasks intertwined with its products.
In Britain, the National Health Service said the outage was having a “disruptive impact” on its services and the Metropolitan Police in London said its online contact forms weren’t working. In Australia, intelligence and police forces said that their operations had been affected. Singapore told its taxpayers that email capabilities had been disrupted, and the Supreme Court of the Philippines and the European Court of Human Rights said the outage could cause delays in their work.
Marten AttaAlla, a cardiothoracic surgeon pausing for lunch near St. Bartholomew’s Hospital in central London, said the outage had complicated efforts to staff an intensive care unit after somebody had called in sick.
“You have to ask around: ‘How do we get around using emails?” he said.
It was one of the most extensive outages to hit Microsoft in recent times, said James Ferryman, a professor of computer science at University of Reading in England. (Professor Ferryman said he had lost access to his own email, and had not been able to attend meetings.)
Outages will almost certainly happen again in the future, he added, underlining the need for organizations to have a “Plan B.”
On Thursday afternoon, workers around the world began reporting issues with a range of Microsoft tools and apps. By 10 a.m. on Friday, more than 20 hours into the disruption, Microsoft said that it was seeing “sustained improvements in service availability.”
“Our efforts are increasingly focused on resolving the remaining issues and restoring consistent service for all affected users,” it said.
It said people could still expect “intermittent connectivity issues or delayed email delivery.”
In Australia, the home affairs minister, Tony Burke, told reporters that he had spoken to Microsoft’s top executive there, and that the company believed it was dealing with “an update that has gone awry.”
Professor Ferryman said that a problem had appeared to swamp parts of the servers that power some of Microsoft 365’s products.
“It’s like a cascading effect,” he said, adding that the systems needed to be brought back bit by bit. “The problem with these outages is you can’t simply turn it all back on at once.”
For many companies, the outage appeared to be more inconvenient than disastrous. Airlines including the Indian low-cost air carrier Indigo and South Africa’s CemAir reported disruptions, though neither said that its flight schedules had been affected.
Many universities, where staff and students rely heavily on Microsoft for email and coursework, issued notices or warnings. In New Zealand, the University of Auckland said that “scammers are sending fake texts and emails that appear to be from IT support or Microsoft relating to today’s outage.”
In Britain, hospitals, clinics and doctors’ offices pointed patients to the telephone if they needed help. In Canada, the Unity Health hospital system in Toronto said that its staff members were having trouble sending and receiving email.
The artificial intelligence companies OpenAI and Anthropic said they were experiencing issues with their connections to Microsoft services on Friday. Workhorse Group Inc., a Michigan-based manufacturer listed on the Nasdaq index, delayed its quarterly earnings call, citing the outage.
The outage prompted frustration and anger — but some glee, too, for workers who suddenly had time on their hands. Memes and celebratory posts spread online, some jokingly rebranding the suite “Microsoft 364.”
Some companies saw the opportunity for a tongue-in-cheek pitch. Royal Mail, Britain’s beleaguered postal service, posted a photo of its distinctive red mailbox on social media with the message, “Ours is always open.” Even so, its website noted that some of its online services were unavailable because of the outage.
Others, too, tried to get on with their work.
Danny Watson, 48, arrived with three vans’ worth of supplies to set up a Christmas market near St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. There had been some confusion with security, he said, which had not received emails about his arrival.
“We had to rely on this,” he said, patting his phone, adding that he eventually got the delivery through after a series of calls. But, he added, “I think the personal touch is a bit better.”
Hari Raj, Ishani Desai and Lynsey Chutel contributed reporting.