Global Microsoft outage disrupts Outlook, Teams and Copilot into Friday

A global Microsoft outage continued into Friday, disrupting email and workplace tools for users, businesses and government agencies across multiple regions.

Downdetector recorded reports from 74 countries and territories within an hour of the disruption, CNA reported. Outlook users struggled to open inboxes or send and receive messages, while problems also affected Teams and Microsoft 365 Copilot.

The disruption centered on Exchange Online, which handles email and calendars for Microsoft 365. Its failure also affected features in other applications that rely on those services. In Teams, most calls and chats remained available, but scheduling meetings, sending invitations and editing calendar events could fail. Copilot users could encounter problems loading chats or retrieving work emails and calendar entries.

The outage hit the U.S. House of Representatives and several government agencies overseas. Australia’s federal police and intelligence agency were among those affected, and Japan confirmed disruptions to government IT systems. OpenAI and Anthropic reported problems with the tools that connect their AI services to Microsoft 365. The outage also disrupted customer support by email at two Indian airlines, IndiGo and Akasa Air. 

Microsoft’s initial recovery efforts struggled to hold, with some servers becoming unresponsive again after traffic returned. By Friday morning, a patch had improved stability on part of its infrastructure, and engineers were working to expand it. Full recovery remained unconfirmed at 11:43 a.m. Dubai time.

“We appreciate your organisation’s patience and understanding while we work with urgency to resolve this incident,” Microsoft said.

Administrators can follow EX1550543 for Exchange Online and MO1550821 for the broader disruption in the Microsoft 365 admin center. Recovery updates are also available on Microsoft’s public status page.