- Microsoft 365 suffered a global outage that left Outlook, Teams, and Copilot inoperative for more than 20 hours.
- The incident affected users in more than 70 countries and companies, banks and administrations around the world.
- Microsoft attributes the failure to a technical problem related to a network update and rules out a cyberattack.
- The platform, used by more than 430 million people, began to recover gradually on Friday.
Microsoft 365, Microsoft's suite of professional tools, suffered a global outage that left services such as Outlook, Teams, and Copilot inoperable for more than 20 hours . The incident began on Thursday afternoon and affected users in more than 70 countries , according to outage tracking logs.
The company began gradually restoring its services on Friday. Microsoft reported broad improvements in North America, sustained improvements in Europe, and encouraging signs in Asia Pacific , though it warned that some users might still experience intermittent access and email delays.
Which Microsoft services have failed and how is the recovery progressing?
The outage wasn't limited to email. In addition to Outlook, Microsoft Teams, Copilot, Exchange Online, SharePoint, and Defender , among other services integrated into Microsoft 365, were also affected. In practice, many employees were unable to access their inboxes, schedule meetings, or use the AI assistant normally.
The impact was enormous due to the platform's user base: Microsoft 365 has over 430 million users and millions of businesses worldwide. The recovery was gradual, according to the company.
Early Friday morning, Microsoft was still monitoring the incident and acknowledged that the measures implemented were not yielding the expected results in all regions. As the day progressed, the number of reported outages decreased, although some services continued to experience problems.
Who has been affected by the Microsoft 365 outage?
The disruption affected businesses across a wide range of sectors, from banking and energy to tourism and manufacturing. It also impacted government agencies, hospitals, courts, and citizen services in several countries. In some cases, organizations had to resort to alternative procedures, such as telephone or paper records.
In Spain, the outage affected users and businesses using Outlook and other Microsoft 365 tools. Outside of Europe, banks and organizations in Asia-Pacific, the United States, and other markets confirmed operational problems.
Services that rely on Microsoft infrastructure were also affected. OpenAI and Anthropic reported outages in their Microsoft account connectors, demonstrating the extent to which the outage extended beyond office tools.
Why did Microsoft go down and what has it said about a cyberattack?
Microsoft attributed the problem to a technical glitch related to a network update . The company explained that a process responsible for establishing secure connections became overloaded, causing machines to stop responding. This overload triggered a cascading failure that affected services dependent on Exchange Online.
The tech company ruled out a cyberattack. Charles Lamanna, executive vice president of Copilot at Microsoft, clarified this on the social network X: "For now, I can confirm there is no indication that this is the result of malicious or cyber activity ." The company promised to publish a full report on the root cause once the review is complete.
The incident reignited the debate about reliance on a few technology providers. For hours, thousands of organizations discovered that an external outage can paralyze emails, meetings, and internal processes even if their own systems are functioning correctly.
What can companies affected by the Microsoft outage do?
Businesses with Microsoft 365 corporate contracts can review their service level agreements (SLAs) to see if they are entitled to service credits. To do so, they should review the guaranteed availability and contract terms before making a claim.
While the situation is returning to normal, Microsoft has warned that intermittent access and email delivery delays may still occur . Therefore, it's advisable to check official service status channels and notify teams that some tools may be unreliable for the next few hours.
- Check the status of Microsoft 365 on the company's official channels.
- Review the service level agreement if the company has a corporate contract.
- Use alternative channels, such as the telephone, for urgent matters.
- Warn teams that intermittent access and email delays may occur.
The Microsoft 365 outage offers a practical lesson for organizations: having contingency plans and alternative solutions reduces the impact when a global provider fails. The company continues working to restore full service, while users check if their services are back to normal.
