Microsoft says attempts to fix global outage not going 'as expected'

Microsoft is struggling to restore Outlook, Teams, Copilot and other services after a global outage that had lasted more than 11 hours. Downdetector reports disruption in 74 countries and territories, particularly across the Americas, Europe and Australia, though reports may understate the impact in some places. Microsoft says the incident is not a cyberattack. It has blamed “elevated load” after an unexpectedly large number of servers became unavailable, pushing extra traffic onto the remaining infrastructure. The company reports partial recovery in some regions, but its fixes have not produced sustained improvement; it says efforts to recover frontend servers and optimize traffic are continuing.

The disruption is affecting workplaces, financial firms and government agencies. Indian companies have struggled with email and client calls, while Australia’s intelligence and federal police agencies reported mainly email impacts. Singapore said some government systems were affected but emergency services remained operational; Japanese agencies used backup communication channels to keep operations running. In China, Outlook is a key link for some businesses working internationally. The outage highlights how heavily organizations rely on Microsoft’s services and the need for alternative systems. A technology expert warned that, if no cyberattack is responsible, the failure would reflect serious incompetence. The scale recalls the 2024 CrowdStrike incident, which disabled about 8.5 million Windows computers and disrupted flights, emergency services and banking.