A widespread global Microsoft outage has disrupted services for tens of thousands of users worldwide, impacting major workplace tools such as Outlook, Teams, and the Copilot AI software for over 10 hours.
The disruption, which began impacting users globally, quickly spread across 74 countries and territories within an hour, according to monitoring website Downdetector. Outlook reports alone peaked at roughly 140,000 on Thursday before dropping to 28,000 overnight. The fallout has affected banks, government agencies, courts, and major financial institutions from the US to Hong Kong, while tech companies like OpenAI and Anthropic have also experienced related problems.
Microsoft executive Charles Lamanna confirmed that the global outage was not caused by a cyber-security incident or malicious hacking activity. However, restoration efforts have proved difficult. While the tech giant reported observing "marginal success" in its latest efforts, earlier updates noted that attempted fixes were "not taking as expected."
With more than 430 million people relying on Microsoft 365 apps, the ongoing situation continues to affect critical daily operations as technical teams work to identify alternative workstreams and restore full service capacity.
