Microsoft experienced a widespread outage on Thursday and Friday, disrupting services for millions of its customers as engineers worked urgently to resolve one of the company’s largest server issues to date.
Connectivity issues began shortly before 1 p.m. ET Thursday and persisted into Friday, affecting Outlook and Teams, as well as several Microsoft 365 services, including SharePoint and Copilot. Many external services connected to Microsoft products, such as Outlook Calendar, were also affected.
The outage, which has lasted more than 12 hours, crippled communications for businesses and governments, forcing some organizations to revert to fax machines and halting at least one bond repurchase in Europe.
Microsoft says it has found no evidence of malicious activity behind the outage. In its initial updates on Thursday, the company said the connectivity problems stemmed from infrastructure facing “elevated load across multiple regions,” caused by a “number of servers being unexpectedly unavailable; straining the remaining infrastructure.” Some servers were failing automated health checks, it said.
The outage ranks among the longest in Microsoft’s history and marks the second lengthy disruption to its services this year.
By CEO NA Editorial Staff
