Microsoft 365 services recover after about 24 hours of outages

In short: Microsoft says a faulty update caused Microsoft 365 to go down worldwide, and most services are now back online.

What happened

Microsoft 365, the bundle of online work tools that includes Outlook email, Teams chat, and other services, suffered a major outage that spread across more than 70 countries. People began reporting problems around 12 pm Eastern time on Thursday, starting in North America and then expanding globally.

Microsoft says the issue was not a cyberattack, and it was not caused by AI systems or “AI agents” (software that can take actions for you). Instead, the company said the outage came from a technical problem tied to an earlier network capacity upgrade, which showed up after a recent network change. Think of it like road work that looked finished, but a later change caused traffic lights to fail across a city.

By the next day, Microsoft reported “broad recovery and stability” on its status page, though it said it was still restoring service for some customers and regions. Microsoft also said it will publish a full report after it finishes reviewing what went wrong.

Why it matters

When Microsoft 365 goes down, a lot of everyday work stops. Reports described disruptions across governments, airlines, hospitals, and emergency services. Even after systems come back, users may get a backlog of email and alerts all at once, like a pile of mail arriving after the post office reopens.

Microsoft said it extended the email delivery window to 48 hours to help make sure messages sent during the outage still get delivered.

Source: Wired