By Elena Vasquez

AFP reported on Thursday that Microsoft said repair efforts for a disruption that Downdetector said had knocked out products in 74 countries and territories were not taking effect as expected, disrupting email, Teams and the AI assistant Copilot during an hours-long outage.

The company said it was identifying alternative workstreams to increase capacity but gave no time for full restoration of its cloud-based Microsoft 365 service.

Microsoft said: “We’ve monitored the status of the changes applied to improve serviceability and confirmed they’re not taking as expected. We’re identifying alternate workstreams that can be applied to increase capacity.”

What caused the Microsoft 365 disruption?

Microsoft attributed the outage to elevated load on its infrastructure. In a later statement on X, it said a portion of infrastructure across multiple regions was experiencing elevated load, likely contributing to the connectivity errors.

AFP described Microsoft 365 as the company’s cloud-based subscription service, which includes Outlook and Teams. Microsoft said it was aggressively pursuing all available paths to reduce the impact.

Microsoft initially said it was investigating outage reports in the Americas. It later confirmed that the issue apparently affected Microsoft 365 service connectivity for users in any region, broadening the scope from its first response.

How widely did the outage spread?

Downdetector said the disruption had spread globally within one hour, knocking out Microsoft products in 74 countries and territories. A map posted on X showed reports across the Americas and in parts of Europe, Asia and Africa.

Companies and governments reported being unable to communicate through Outlook, according to AFP. Thousands of users also reported issues with Teams and Copilot, according to Downdetector.

New Zealand’s foreign ministry sent a notice saying its “ability to receive emails has been affected by the global Microsoft outage.” The ministry said the disruption also affected all New Zealand embassies, consulates and representative offices worldwide.

What progress did Microsoft report?

As the outage ran for hours, Microsoft posted a series of updates on X showing continued attempts to restore full service. Those efforts had not produced the expected result, and the company did not issue a firm time for complete restoration.

Downdetector recorded a sharp decline around 0450 GMT in users’ reports of disruption in Washington and Hong Kong. The city-level decline did not coincide with an announcement of full global recovery, as Microsoft continued to post updates throughout the hours-long incident.

Shortly after 6 pm Eastern Time, equivalent to 2300 GMT, Microsoft said it was observing limited recovery. It was routing user traffic away from affected servers and working to restore capacity.

Microsoft said clients might reconnect gradually as capacity came back. Its position at the latest reported stage was therefore partial rather than complete service restoration, with no date attached to full availability.

What remains unresolved?

The unresolved operational issue was capacity: Microsoft had identified elevated load across multiple regions, said its serviceability changes were not taking hold, and was seeking other workstreams to add capacity.

For Outlook, Teams and Copilot users, the result was an hours-long interruption without a published full-restoration time. Microsoft’s stated next steps were to redirect traffic, restore capacity and allow clients to reconnect gradually.