Since Thursday evening, people around the world have been having issues with Microsoft services, including Outlook, Teams and Copilot. Microsoft is dealing with a global outage that's affecting organisations in at least 74 countries, from small businesses to government departments.
By around 18:00 GMT on Thursday, nearly 140,000 people had reported problems with Outlook on Downdetector, more than 2,000 times the usual level. For a lot of teams, that means no email, no meetings and no Copilot on a working Friday. Here's what we know so far and what you can do while Microsoft works through it.
What's happened
Microsoft says the outage was caused by unusually high load on its infrastructure.
Because other tech companies run on Microsoft's infrastructure, the knock-on effects have spread further. OpenAI and Anthropic have both reported issues with their own tools.
Microsoft has confirmed this isn't a cyber security incident. There's no sign it was caused by an attack.
Where the fix stands
Microsoft's early updates were encouraging, with the company saying it was seeing positive results as it restarted services. A few hours later, it said some fixes weren't working as expected and it was still dealing with issues on several fronts.
Microsoft is actively working on a fix. We'll update this post as we hear more.
What we're doing
As a Microsoft Solutions Partner, we're keeping a close eye on Microsoft's updates and passing on anything our customers need to know. Our support team is on hand to help people work around the disruption, and to check everything is running properly once services come back.
What you can do in the meantime
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Try the Outlook desktop app. Emails you've already received may still be available offline.
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Hold off on quick fixes. Resetting passwords, reinstalling apps or changing settings won't help here, and these changes can cause extra problems once services return.
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Watch out for scams. Fraudsters often use high-profile outages as cover, so be wary of unexpected emails or calls offering to fix the problem.
Need a hand?
Our support team is here to help, contact us on 0333 234 0011 or click here to get in touch. We'll keep this post updated until Microsoft confirms services are back to normal.
