Microsoft 365 outage enters second day as global disruption continues

A worldwide Microsoft outage continued into a second day Friday, disrupting services used by businesses, governments and individual customers. Users reported problems with Outlook, Teams and the artificial intelligence assistant Copilot. Microsoft said the disruption affected a broad range of Microsoft 365 products that connect with Exchange Online and its email services, but its early Friday update did not specify when service would be restored.

The Redmond, Wash.-based company said it was pursuing several approaches to determine the cause and repair affected infrastructure. Microsoft reported no indication of malicious activity. Its recovery updates showed continuing difficulties: after announcing that service health and functionality had been restored, it expanded the list of affected services and said changes intended to improve availability were not working as expected. A later Friday update reported early stabilization and increased capacity as recovery efforts continued.

Microsoft says more than 430 million people use its Microsoft 365 applications. The disruption also reached other technology platforms, with OpenAI and Anthropic both reporting trouble connecting to Microsoft 365 tools. Those problems illustrated how interruptions can spread across services as people increasingly use artificial intelligence platforms to work with software supplied by other companies.

In Canada, Unity Health Toronto, which operates several hospitals, declared a code grey, a designation for an infrastructure failure. The network said staff were having difficulty sending and receiving email, while care for patients and residents remained unaffected. Air India likewise said its flights were operating normally, but it temporarily redirected email services so customer inquiries could continue reaching the airline.

Government systems across Asia were also affected. Japan's Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Masanao Ozaki said the disruption had hit government IT infrastructure. Authorities secured alternative ways to communicate, including telephones. Singapore's Government Technology Agency said government email was unavailable and that it was working with Microsoft on a solution. The Philippines' Supreme Court reported disruption to some operations, including email responses.

Australian Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke said Friday that he had discussed the outage with Microsoft's leading executive in Australia and the government's national cybersecurity co-ordinator. Speaking to reporters in Sydney, Burke said Microsoft did not believe it was facing a cyberattack.

Businesses reported consequences ranging from communication difficulties to postponed events. Hong Kong aluminum company operator Danny Lau said his firm's Outlook accounts could not receive updates from U.S. customers, raising concerns about production schedules if the outage persisted. Some Hong Kong banks experienced disruption to parts of their operations, while U.S. industrial technology company Workhorse Group Inc. postponed its quarterly earnings conference call.

Outage tracking service Downdetector recorded reports from roughly 130,000 users in dozens of countries who had trouble accessing Outlook on Thursday. New reports subsequently declined from that peak, although Microsoft's recovery work continued Friday.