Microsoft is struggling to restore its services following a major global outage that has disrupted access to popular workplace applications, including Teams, Outlook and its artificial intelligence assistant Copilot.
Tens of thousands of users worldwide have reported connectivity problems, affecting businesses and organisations that rely on Microsoft’s platforms for daily communication and collaboration.
According to monitoring website Downdetector, reports of problems with Outlook peaked at nearly 140,000 globally at around 6pm GMT on Thursday.
Users in several countries, including the United States, Japan and Singapore, have also reported difficulties accessing Microsoft’s services.
The company acknowledged the disruption in a series of updates on X, saying several servers had become unexpectedly unavailable, placing additional pressure on its remaining systems.
“We’re aggressively pursuing all pathways to reduce impact,” Microsoft said.
A company spokesperson added that efforts were under way to resolve the problems and restore normal operations.
“We appreciate our customers’ patience while we work to restore services as soon as possible,” the spokesperson said.
Microsoft later warned that some services which had been restored could become unresponsive again, adding that customers in any region could still experience disruptions.
The outage has affected Microsoft 365, a widely used subscription platform that provides businesses with workplace tools such as Outlook, Teams and OneDrive.
The services are particularly important to international organisations that depend on them to communicate, share files and coordinate work across different locations.
There was no indication that the disruption had been caused by a cyberattack, according to the BBC.
The impact has also spread beyond Microsoft’s own platforms, with artificial intelligence companies Anthropic and OpenAI experiencing problems linked to their connections with Microsoft’s systems.
OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, said it was investigating an issue affecting its Microsoft service connections, which had caused some tools to behave unexpectedly.
The latest disruption comes just weeks after Microsoft experienced another outage involving its Azure cloud platform, which affected its productivity services and businesses around the world.
The consequences have also reached the corporate sector, with electric truck manufacturer Workhorse Group postponing the release of its third-quarter financial results.
The company, which had been scheduled to announce its results on November 12, rescheduled the announcement to November 16, citing business disruptions caused by the global Microsoft outage.
