Microsoft has announced that it has successfully restored services to its customers, marking the end of a widespread outage that disrupted operations worldwide.
The company attributed the interruption to “elevated load” on its infrastructure. Affected services included Outlook email, Teams communication platform, and the Copilot AI assistant, impacting users in at least 74 countries across the Americas, Europe, Asia, and Africa, according to the monitoring site Downdetector.
On the day prior, Microsoft had indicated a “broad recovery” for some services, clarifying that the technical issue was not related to cyberattacks or artificial intelligence agents. The outage had significant repercussions, particularly for public services and businesses, as reported by users globally.
In New Zealand, for instance, the foreign ministry acknowledged its email capabilities were hindered by the outage, which also affected its embassies and consulates worldwide.
Initially, Microsoft focused on investigating reports of disruptions in the Americas but soon confirmed that the connectivity issues were affecting Microsoft 365 services across all regions. Users began reporting issues starting early morning on Thursday, with significant declines in connectivity reported around 0450 GMT in major cities like Washington and Hong Kong.
As the outage persisted, Microsoft provided updates on social media, noting attempts to reroute user traffic from affected servers. The company reported observing limited recovery efforts, aiming to return full service to users.
