Yes, US readers, it’s still broken
Readers in the US may be surprised to wake up to the news that Microsoft’s outage is not fixed!
While North America was asleep, there has been widepread disruption around the world – from schools, courts and public services in Australia, to companies and government services in Japan, and then schools, the police and the NHS in the UK.
The cause of the mega-outage, which began around 18 hours ago, is still not known.
Microsoft says it has “no evidence of malicious activity associated with this incident” at this time.
Reminder, it reported around 45 minutes ago that the situation was improving in Europe, Japan and North America.
Many Microsoft 365 services are affected, for example:
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Problems with Exchange Online mean users may be unable to access their mailbox using Outlook on the web
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Microsoft 365 Education features including Assignments, Reading Progress, and Speaker Progress may be impacted.
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Microsoft Copilot 365 – users may be unable to load Copilot Chat or receive responses in the web and desktop apps
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The Microsoft To Do app may not load, and users may see operation failures.
On Teams, Microsoft says:
Most of the core functionality including joining calls, meetings, group chats, and channel messages are not impacted. Scenarios that depend on Exchange Online, including Calendar related failures with scheduling, invites, viewing, and meeting edits. Creation of Live or Virtual events fail. Failures with Copilot responses for outlook, calendar, or M365 files, read history, or adding to new chats.
Navigating to App chats, adding new contacts or syncing contacts in settings fail. Standard channels are working fine but users may experience the inability to create or delete private or shared channels.
Key events
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Microsoft: ‘We remain focused on addressing residual impact’
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Microsoft: We’re observing sustained improvements in service availability
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US jail unable to release prisoners due to Microsoft outage
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Tampa: emails disrupted, full restoration expected within 48 hours
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Microsoft: continuing to see improvements
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MS: ‘broader improvements’ in North America
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Yes, US readers, it’s still broken
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Microsoft reports ‘encouraging’ progress in recovery in Europe
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Microsoft: We’ve made more progress
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NHS England: Staff are turning to paper records
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Schools inspector Ofsted, and universities, hit by outage
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Railway passengers may have problems with emailed tickets
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Bank of England caught up in Outlook outage
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UK healthcare system seeing ‘widespread’ and ‘serious’ disruption
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Microsoft: We’re seeing ‘early signs of stabilization’
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Tell us: have you been affected by the Microsoft outage?
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NHS organisations reports issues with Outlook and Teams
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UK government putting ‘contingency plans’ in place
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UK police can’t receive crime reports online due to Microsoft problems
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Schools: Phone, don’t email!
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UK government engineers ‘working with Microsoft’ now
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Microsoft outage: The state of play
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Microsoft outage has “major impact” in Japan
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Microsoft: we’re seeing positive results for server stability
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Microsoft: seeing ‘marginal success’ patching servers
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Tech giants and international airlines say they’ve been hit by outage
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Microsoft’s global outage will cost Australia billions, expert says
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Microsoft outage may persist as fix is ‘not taking as expected’
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Victorian government warns of opportunistic scammers amid outage
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‘Looks like we will have to talk to people’: Australians on their email-free day
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WA government: ‘Microsoft are prioritising life, safety and Government services’
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What we know so far about the global Microsoft outage
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Microsoft having issues bringing servers back online
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Microsoft ‘do not believe they are dealing with a cyber event’, Tony Burke says
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Schools, courts and public service staff affected
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Thousands of Australians report issues with Microsoft 365
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Welcome
In an update for consumers, Microsoft said:
We’re observing signs of sustained recovery throughout the affected environment, and while our investigation into the underlying root cause is ongoing, we’re continuing to monitor the impacted services to verify service health levels remain stable. This issue impacts Outlook.com, OneDrive, OneNote, Microsoft To Do, Teams, and Microsoft 365 for the web although you may also see issues in other Microsoft 365 services.”
While the world’s IT departments scramble to get things back up and running, some brands have been quick to jump on the chaos by sharing a wave of memes.
“Microsoft being down is the equivalent of an adult snow day right?!” Aldi UK wrote on Facebook.
“Whoever’s troubleshooting and working on the outage rn … take your time. Go out and get a Whopper,” said Burger King.
KitKat, meanwhile:
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Microsoft: ‘We remain focused on addressing residual impact’
Another incremental update from Microsoft at just before 4pm GMT:
Current Status: We remain focused on addressing residual impact and ensuring reliable service restoration. We continue to assess recovery across various connection methods and are closely monitoring service health to verify sustained stability.”
Small business owners and employees have been telling the Guardian how the Microsoft outage has affected them, with some services now being restored but concerns growing about the knock-on effects in the days ahead, my colleagues Nicola Slawson and Alfie Packham report.
Edward Holliday, a small business owner in West Yorkshire providing fire safety advice, says his emails started pinging again about 2.15pm. Until then, he had been unable to complete reports or respond to requests for quotes from potential clients.
“During the week I picked up a number of requests for quotes and just couldn’t get back to them,” he says, adding that there is a worry he’ll potentially lose out on that business now.
Although he managed to get some other work done during the outage and he didn’t lose any emails, he is now facing a backlog that he expects will spill into the weekend as he still needs to send out the quotes to potential clients and finish the reports he was unable to access.
“That’s the beauty of working for yourself,” he says.
Holliday says he is also concerned about what caused the outage, particularly given the recent spate of cyber-attacks.
“It would worry me if I thought that Microsoft were vulnerable to a cyber-attack,” he says. “Obviously my whole business exists within the Microsoft environment.”
Meanwhile, Sandra Wright, who works for a family-run cleaning supplies business in Kent, says the disruption could have consequences for supply chains, with the company unable to place orders.
The company has been unable to place orders with suppliers, potentially disrupting its usual delivery schedules.
“Although it is merely a day, a lot of companies, especially ones who operate via outsourced warehousing, have certain order days, be it for their weekly, fortnightly or monthly slots,” she says.
“Today alone would have had a ripple effect on these order dates.”
The outage has also left colleagues anxious about what might happen next, with some fearing further disruption despite Microsoft saying the problems were not caused by a cyber-attack.
“Today’s occurrence with Microsoft shows that nothing is untouchable,” Wright says, adding that staff are concerned about the wider repercussions for businesses that rely heavily on email.
Hugo Pickering, a business owner in Oxfordshire, says the outage today prevented him from accessing payroll data, meaning his 12 staff had to wait for their pay.
“As they are mainly on real living wage rate, it is bad news if they don’t get their pay accurately paid in a timely fashion,” he says.
Richard Adams
Universities and other educational institutions in the UK are reporting that email access and related services appear to be getting back to normal this afternoon.
The University of Manchester has told staff and students: “Microsoft have announced that they are seeing encouraging recovery progress in Europe, with service availability and email delivery performance improving. We are starting to see improvements in the delivery of some emails across the university and other services are starting to recover.
“IT services are continuing to monitor, although please note that there may be delays to delivery of some emails.”
Meanwhile the Office for Students, England’s higher education regulator, said its email access had been restored but noted: “We understand that some institutions and individuals may continue to experience intermittent problems.”
When digital technology lets you down, sometimes you have to go analogue. Companies affected by Microsoft’s outage have urged people to switch to alternative methods of communication, like picking up the phone.
Reuters had the following report:
European exchange operator Euronext, which runs bourses in Paris, Brussels, Lisbon, Amsterdam, Oslo, Athens and Milan, told listed companies to pick up the phone.
“We have ensured that the team has sufficient capacity to manage the situation and handle the additional workload,” a spokesperson said, adding that Euronext was verifying the identity of callers to protect confidentiality and integrity.
Aviva, which reported earnings on Friday, said it had put backup plans in place, including sending out alternative phone numbers for earnings calls and using Bluetooth to transfer recordings because email was down.
The British insurer tested a similar-scale outage of its most critical technology systems about two weeks ago, CEO Amanda Blanc told Reuters.
Shipping group Maersk asked customers to call with anything urgent and urged them to verify any unexpected communications about the outage with their local representative.
In Taiwan, the outage disrupted fund management at securities firms, life insurers and investment trust companies, people familiar with the situation said.
At another financial firm, trades such as purchases and sales of short-term bills, which are normally confirmed by email, had to be confirmed by fax instead, one of the people said.
Microsoft: We’re observing sustained improvements in service availability
Microsoft may not be able to deliver your email, but it has a fine knack for writing up incremental progress towards fixing its outage.
In its latest update, MS says:
Current Status: We’re observing sustained improvements in service availability as recovery progresses across affected Microsoft 365 services. While service functionality continues to improve, some users may still experience intermittent connectivity issues or delayed email delivery.
This is one of the longest and most disruptive outages Microsoft 365 has ever suffered, reports Professor James Ferryman, professor of computer science at the University of Reading.
Professor Ferryman explains why it’s taking so long to fix:
The problem is in Exchange Online, which is the email and calendar system behind Outlook. Teams and Copilot rely on it too, for calendars, meetings and getting at people’s work data. So when Exchange has a bad day, a lot of other things do as well.
“What Microsoft has told us is that the part of its servers that sets up secure connections is getting swamped, and once that happens the server just stops answering. The trouble is that this kind of failure snowballs. One server falls over, its work gets passed to the next one, and meanwhile huge numbers of phones and laptops keep trying to get back in. You can’t just turn it all back on at once. You have to bring it back bit by bit.
US jail unable to release prisoners due to Microsoft outage
Astonishingly, the Microsoft outage is preventing some US prison inmates from being released!
The Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Office in Colorado, USA, has warned they cannot process bond payments, as they rely on Outlook email notifications. So unless the money is handed over in person, people can’t be let out.
The Sheriff’s office explains, on X:
The Microsoft outage is affecting online bond payments for individuals being held at the Arapahoe County Detention Facility. Because of the outage, jail officials are not receiving the email notifications needed to process online bond payments.
Until Outlook email is restored, anyone needing to post bond for immediate release must do so in person at the jail. We apologize for the inconvenience and appreciate your patience. For questions or additional information, please call 720-874-3500.
Shares in Microsoft have dipped slightly at the start of trading in New York
They’re down 1.1% at $516.86 – a fairly modest reaction to bringing down a decent chunk of the world’s email services.
Kathleen Brooks, research director at trading firm XTB , says:
“This is the third Microsoft outage in a year, and raises questions about whether Microsoft can service its AI enhanced products. The market does not appear overly worried about the situation…
If services are not back up and running in a quick and smooth fashion, then the sell off could get worse.
Dame Chi Onwurah, Chair of the UK’s Science and Technology Committee, has commented on the Microsoft Outlook outages:
“The global Microsoft outage only serves to highlight once again the lack of resilience in the UK’s digital infrastructure, and the dangers that this dependency can pose to our security, economy and public services.
“My committee’s report on delivering a digital government concluded that the UK is hugely dependent on a small number of US-based technology providers for our public services, preventing homegrown alternatives from developing. In its response, the government could not tell us how much it was spending on IT and digital or who it was spending it with – without even knowing this, how can we protect against vendor lock-in or achieve the resilience and digital sovereignty the UK needs.”
Microsoft has suffered a certain amount of snark due to its continued service outage.
Britain’s Royal Mail posted a photo on X of one of its trademark red post boxes with a simple message: “No Inbox, No Problem.”
The message at the top of the post said: “Ours is always open.”
However, Royal Mail’s track record for service delivery is not beyond criticism either! One X user has proposed adding a community note, flagging that MPs predicted it will deliver 219 million letters late this year….
Tampa: emails disrupted, full restoration expected within 48 hours
Now it’s the turn of American towns and cities to warn residents that services are affected by the global Microsoft service outage.
The City of Tampa, in Florida, has warned it is “currently impacted”
And it warns it could take up to 48 hours to restore services fully:
City of Tampa offices are open and operating on normal schedules. Walk-in services, phone lines, and emergency operations (911) remain fully operational.
However, residents and external partners may experience delays or failures when sending emails to City of Tampa accounts or receiving emails from them. Technology teams are actively monitoring the Microsoft issue and based on vendor guidance, full service restoration is anticipated within 48 hours.
The Microsoft outage may be an – unwelcome – opportunity to test how companies and public services would cope under a serious cyber attack.
Forrester’s principal analyst Dario Maisto epxlains:
“The Microsoft outage, for the little we know so far, represents the perfect quasi-natural experiment for stress testing an organization’s – and even an entire continent – digital sovereignty posture.
“Although this outage does not strictly pose a sovereignty question, as this seems to be more an accident than the consequence of a government’s will, it does allow us to test what would happen if interruption of mailing services and AI tools like Copilot would be the direct consequence of a political act from the government.
Microsoft: continuing to see improvements
Microsoft has now declared that service availability continues to improve – but some users may still have problems accessing their email.
In an updated Current Status on the outage, it says:
We’re continuing to see improvements in service availability, with email queues significantly reduced and approaching normal levels. Some users may still experience intermittent access issues or delayed email delivery as recovery continues.
Simon Azzopardi, CEO of security firm CoreView, says IT teams need to do three things following the Microsoft outage:
“Confirm that security and compliance controls such as data loss prevention, sensitivity labelling and Intune compliance policies are working as intended.
Review every emergency change made during the outage, because workarounds made under pressure tend to become permanent gaps.
And treat delayed email with extra caution: Microsoft warned that Safe Links might not be able to check URLs during the disruption, and attackers routinely use outages as cover.”
Azzopardi adds:
“Our sympathy goes out to every IT team that has spent their time keeping their organisation running without email, calendars and, in many cases, their security and compliance tools.”
