Microsoft is struggling to restore service amid a widespread outage affecting its key products, including Outlook, Teams, and its artificial intelligence platform Copilot.
The disruption began around 18:00 GMT on Thursday and reportedly peaked at nearly 140,000 reports on monitoring site Downdetector. Users across regions — including the US, Japan, and Singapore — reported issues accessing calendar details, viewing files, or using messaging features within Microsoft’s suite of workplace applications.
What services are affected?
Services under impact include:
- Outlook email
- Messaging via Teams
- Copilot, Microsoft's AI assistant platform
- OneDrive file access in some cases
The company has confirmed that users may be unable to view certain files or calendar entries. Messaging and online meetings remain largely functional according to official statements.
Root cause: Unexpected server unavailability
In a statement posted on X (formerly Twitter), Microsoft said the issue was caused by "a number of servers being unexpectedly unavailable," which strained its remaining systems. The company did not indicate any signs of malicious activity or cyber-attack during this incident.
A spokesperson for Microsoft emphasized ongoing efforts to resolve the problems, stating: 'We're aggressively pursuing all pathways to reduce impact.'
The company also warned that services restored at some point may become unresponsive again, and users in any region could be affected as the situation evolves.
Broader implications
The outage has disrupted operations beyond Microsoft’s ecosystem. AI companies such as OpenAI have reported investigating connectivity issues with Microsoft's infrastructure — a problem affecting tools like ChatGPT. This highlights dependencies between major technology platforms.
Earlier this month, Microsoft experienced an Azure cloud platform outage impacting its productivity suite globally. The current incident appears part of a recurring pattern of service instability within its digital infrastructure.
In one case, electric vehicle maker Workhorse Group rescheduled its third-quarter earnings report from 12 November to 16 November due to business disruptions caused by the global Microsoft outage.
The BBC understands there is no evidence suggesting the event was triggered by a cyber-attack or malicious activity. All information presented here comes directly from monitoring reports and official statements issued by Microsoft through X and verified via Downdetector data.