A massive global Microsoft software outage has entered its second day, leaving millions of users worldwide without access to essential business and communication tools like Outlook and Teams.
The disruption began on Thursday and quickly spread across 74 countries and territories within an hour, according to Downdetector. The widespread technical failure impacted a wide range of daily operations, causing government services to falter, parents to struggle with contacting schools, and financial institutions—including major banks in Hong Kong—to face workplace disruptions.
As the outage stretched on, Microsoft reported that it was working to restore affected services. The tech giant confirmed that the incident was not caused by a cybersecurity breach. However, technical complications slowed recovery efforts; Microsoft noted that initial changes meant to improve serviceability did not take effect as expected, forcing the company to identify alternate workstreams to manage traffic imbalances.
By Friday, Microsoft stated that progress was being made, with services being restored in the Asia Pacific region and showing improvement for users across Europe and North America as recovery efforts continued.
