Microsoft scrambles to fix global outage affecting Teams and Outlook

Microsoft says it has addressed the technical issue behind a global outage affecting Teams, Outlook and other Microsoft services, and is gradually restoring them. The disruption matters because people, businesses and public services worldwide rely on these tools for daily operations.

The outage began on Thursday evening and lasted about 18 hours, with services starting to recover shortly before midday GMT on Friday. Down Detector recorded nearly 130,000 reports across 74 countries; affected services included Word, Excel, PowerPoint, SharePoint, OneDrive and Copilot. Microsoft said the incident was not caused by a cyber-attack or AI agents and suggested server settings may have been involved. In the UK, healthcare, police, schools and rail services reported disruption.