Microsoft’s global outage ran into a second day Friday. Outlook email is still failing for many users, and parts of Teams, Copilot and other Microsoft 365 tools only partly work. If your work or school email runs through Microsoft, this is what’s happening and what you can do.
The problems began late Thursday morning, Costa Rica time, when Microsoft opened an incident for users who couldn’t reach their Exchange Online mailboxes. At first the company said the problem was concentrated in the Americas. It later confirmed that users in any region could lose their connection to Microsoft 365.
Downdetector, which tracks outages, logged problems in 74 countries and territories. At Thursday’s peak it had more than 130,000 reports about Outlook alone, most of them from the United States. On Friday morning Microsoft said traffic was gradually coming back. The biggest improvements were in North America, with steady progress in much of Europe. The company still hasn’t said when everything will be fully restored.
Microsoft says Teams messaging, calls and meetings are mostly working. Teams calendars, meeting invitations and scheduling are still affected because they rely on the same email system. Some Outlook users still can’t sign in, and many messages are arriving hours late. Copilot users may get errors when they load a chat or ask for an answer. Planner, To Do and some SharePoint sharing features have also had problems.
Microsoft hasn’t named a root cause. It first blamed heavy load on part of its infrastructure in several regions. Later it said many servers had unexpectedly gone offline, which pushed their traffic onto the machines still running. Engineers stopped all deployments, moved traffic away from the affected systems and restarted servers. They’re also reviewing recent network configuration changes. Some servers brought back overnight failed again once traffic returned, and Microsoft said its early fixes had only marginal success.
Microsoft said it isn’t aware of any malicious activity. Executive vice president Charles Lamanna said the outage doesn’t appear to be a cyberattack. Many Costa Ricans remember the 2022 ransomware attacks that took down Finance Ministry systems and the Social Security System (CCSS). This is different: people can’t get into their accounts, but nothing Microsoft has said suggests customer data was exposed.
Health services abroad have been hit hard. In the United Kingdom, the National Health Service rescheduled some procedures after Teams went down, because it’s a key link between managers and health workers. The NHS also warned that some patients may struggle to get prescriptions, since pharmacies can’t reach doctors’ offices by email.
A UK union, the GMB, said ambulance services and medical centers saw a serious impact, although urgent care appeared unaffected. Japanese economy minister Ryosei Akazawa warned the impact was significant. New Zealand’s foreign ministry had trouble receiving email at its embassies and consulates.
In Australia, schools, courts and government offices began Friday without Outlook. The Euronext stock exchange told listed companies to use the phone, and Workhorse Group, a US company, postponed its quarterly results. No count of affected users in Costa Rica has been published, and no national institution has announced disruptions so far.
Still, Microsoft 365 is part of daily public life here. The Ministry of Public Education gives public school students and teachers institutional email and Microsoft Teams accounts. The Judiciary has made Teams its official platform for virtual hearings. If your email is down, check Microsoft’s official service page at status.cloud.microsoft before you assume the problem is on your end. Resetting your password or reinstalling Outlook won’t fix this.
A message that hasn’t arrived isn’t necessarily lost. Microsoft extended its delivery window to 48 hours, so delayed email is held and delivered instead of bounced back. If you’ve sent anything urgent since Thursday, call or use another channel to make sure it arrived. For urgent coordination, use Teams chat and calls, which mostly work. Double-check meeting times, though, because calendars may be out of sync.
Watch for scama since outages bring a wave of fake “support” emails and texts asking you to log in or reset your password. Don’t click links in those messages. Go to the status page directly. Microsoft said it will keep posting updates on its service status page until everything is restored. It’s the latest of several large cloud outages this year, and it shows how much work, school and public services depend on a few technology providers.
