Microsoft 365 outage hits 70+ countries: what we know about Outlook and Teams

If your inbox has been dead since Thursday, you're not alone. Microsoft 365 services have been down or unstable for many hours across the globe, and roughly 430 million people use the package.

What happened?

The trouble started on Thursday. Tens of thousands of users could not get into their Outlook email, and according to the outage tracker Downdetector, the problem spread worldwide within an hour and hit services in more than 70 countries.

It's not just Outlook. In Teams, scheduling meetings and calendar links often failed. The AI assistant Copilot, the admin portal and connections to third-party services, including AI providers such as OpenAI and Anthropic, were also disrupted at least at times.

Microsoft says its first fixes did not work as hoped. Engineers earlier explained that a process responsible for setting up secure connections was overloaded on affected servers, so the machines stopped handling requests. The company also rolled back a recent configuration change that coincided with the start of the outage. By early afternoon it reported progress restoring services in Europe.

Who is affected?

Governments, too. Australia's intelligence service and federal police reported outages, and Canberra activated an agreement with Microsoft to get its systems restored first. The US House of Representatives reported restrictions, and Japan's deputy chief cabinet secretary Masanao Ozaki said the government's information system infrastructure was hit. According to the BBC, the NHS (Britain's public health service) and Parliament in London were affected too.

In Germany, federal authorities appear to be working normally, said a spokesperson for the BSI (Germany's cybersecurity agency). But the BSI expects the German economy to be hit very hard.

Elsewhere, Indian airlines IndiGo and Akasa Air lost email access, and fund management in Taiwan was disrupted. Workhorse Group postponed its quarterly figures, and luxury group Richemont delayed its results. Euronext asked listed companies to pass on key information by phone.

Was it a cyberattack?

Microsoft says there are no signs of one. Australia's cyber security minister Tony Burke said it looks like a faulty update, similar to the 2024 CrowdStrike mishap, when a bad update crashed millions of Windows computers and disrupted airlines, banks and hospitals.

One German legal expert has a reminder for anyone hoping for a day off: employees can't simply go home. You still have to be available, and you still get paid. If you want to take time off or use up overtime, agree it with your boss first.

What's next?

Microsoft says its traffic optimisation measures are showing positive results and are being extended to more regions. A more detailed update for users is promised.