Microsoft restores 365 services after global outage hits Outlook, Teams and Copilot

Microsoft said it restored service to all remaining affected customers and regions on Saturday after a global outage disrupted Outlook, Teams and Copilot for more than a day.

What happened

Connectivity problems began shortly before 1 p.m. ET on Thursday, according to CNBC. BleepingComputer reported that Microsoft tracked the incident as MO1550821 and said it began at 1:26 PM ET. Users in more than 70 countries and territories reported problems, according to Downdetector cited by The Guardian. DW reported that Downdetector received reports from 74 countries and territories within about an hour.

Microsoft said the disruption stemmed from "an issue during an earlier network capacity upgrade," CNBC reported. The company initially attributed the problem to elevated infrastructure load across multiple regions, then determined that servers were unexpectedly becoming unavailable.

Microsoft said it has not detected any malicious activity causing the outage. The company also said the issue was not related to cyber or AI agents.

"This was a technical issue not related to cyber or AI / agents," Microsoft said in a statement cited by Yahoo Finance.

Impact

Outlook, Teams, SharePoint and Copilot were among the services affected. Users reported being unable to access email and other Microsoft 365 services.

Governments and businesses across the U.S., Asia-Pacific and Europe reported disruption. The Guardian reported that Japan, Singapore and Australia said some operations were affected. In the UK, NHS staff resorted to paper records and a union reported a serious impact on ambulance services. In Australia, the federal police and Asio were affected, with Asio’s director general Mike Burgess saying the agency’s systems were affected "on one level, yes, but not completely."

Workhorse Group rescheduled its third-quarter earnings release to Nov. 16, citing business disruptions caused by the outage, CNBC reported. Swiss luxury goods giant Richemont had earnings slightly delayed on Friday.

Restoration

Microsoft said Saturday that service had been restored across products. On its Microsoft 365 status page, the company said: "We have completed our efforts to address the underlying issue of the incident and restored service to the remaining impacted customers and regions."

Microsoft said it would issue a full report once its assessment of the outage was complete.

Why it matters

The outage affected governments, courts, healthcare services, businesses, airlines and banks, highlighting dependence on a single provider for critical communication infrastructure. Microsoft reported in 2025 that Copilot had more than 100 million monthly active users, and The Guardian reported that about 430 million people use Microsoft 365 apps.

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Sources

• cnbc.com: Microsoft works to restore Outlook and other 365 services
• finance.yahoo.com: Microsoft continues to restore Outlook email after outage, rules out 'cyber or AI' agents
• theguardian.com: Microsoft says services fully restored after global outage hits governments | Microsoft | The Guardian
• bleepingcomputer.com: Massive Microsoft 365 outage disrupts Outlook, Teams, Copilot worldwide
• dw.com: Microsoft rules out 'malicious activity' in global outage
• journalrecord.com: Microsoft Outlook, Teams outage disrupts businesses worldwide

This article was drafted with AI assistance and checked against the sources above. Company claims are reported as claims. Cover image is AI-generated.