Microsoft says consumer services recovered, enterprise services still being monitored

Microsoft said its consumer products services had fully recovered at 4:10 p.m. UTC on Friday, while it was seeing some sustained recovery for its Microsoft 365 enterprise services.

The company said it was "monitoring the backlog of email messages accrued during this event" before considering the issue with the enterprise services resolved.

"Due to the severity of impact this incident caused, we're monitoring for an extended period to ensure no additional mitigative actions are required," Microsoft said in an update on its service status page.

What was affected

The outage affected Microsoft Outlook, Teams, Copilot and other applications, disrupting online communications across businesses and governments for over 24 hours. The disruption prevented people from sending emails, managing calendars and hosting virtual meetings.

What Microsoft said about the cause

Microsoft said server issues were behind the incident. It said it was not aware of any malicious activity and ruled out AI as the cause.

Other events

The US Homeland Security chief confirmed there was no link between the Microsoft issue and Friday's US air stoppage. Microsoft earlier said it had no indication that the Federal Aviation Administration nationwide ground stop was related to the service disruption.

Why it matters

The disruption lasted more than a day and ranks among the longest in the company's history. It affected government agencies from Australia and Japan to the United States, caused delays at trading firms, hindered some companies from publishing earnings and prompted airlines to warn customers of communication lags, according to public statements. Organizations that host Microsoft services on their own servers, rather than in the cloud, were somewhat spared.

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Sources

• france24.com: Microsoft says consumer products 'fully recovered', business services improving - France 24
• channelnewsasia.com: Microsoft says consumer products services recovered; still monitoring enterprise services - CNA
• emirates247.com: Microsoft says consumer products services recovered on Friday - Emirates 24|7
• centraloregondaily.com: Microsoft says consumer products services recovered; still monitoring enterprise services  | Consumer | centraloregondaily.com
• thedailystar.net: Microsoft says consumer services recovered after outage | The Daily Star

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