Microsoft (MSFT) Widespread Outage Disrupts Outlook and Teams Two Days

Microsoft (MSFT) experienced a widespread service outage starting just before 1 p.m. ET on Thursday and continuing into Friday. The disruption affected key Microsoft 365 services including Outlook, Teams, Sharepoint, and Copilot, as well as external services connected to Outlook features like Calendar. This caused email and other tools to be unavailable particularly throughout the Asian business day and into early European hours.

Microsoft reported at 2:30 a.m. ET on Friday that some users still could not connect to multiple Microsoft 365 services and applied a new patch to improve server stability, noting no malicious activity was detected. The company began increasing computing capacity using virtual machines to address the issue. The outage prompted some companies to delay earnings reports and modify business operations, including Richemont delaying its earnings announcement and Workhorse Group postponing quarterly results. Air India rerouted customer emails to maintain communications without affecting flight operations.

This incident matters because Microsoft 365 underpins many business and government operations worldwide, so its outages can lead to widespread disruption and financial reporting delays. The event highlights the risk of single points of failure in essential cloud services and the operational impact of infrastructure issues on client companies.