Millions of users around the world remain unable to access Microsoft services including Outlook and Teams, as an outage that began late Thursday (November 12) continues into Friday. The disruption has hit governments, banks, police forces and health services, with both the NHS and Greater Manchester Police (GMP) issuing updates.
Many affected users report being unable to send and receive emails through Outlook, while Teams, a messaging platform used by many companies, is not working for some. The Copilot AI assistant and other Microsoft 365 services are also disrupted.
Global scale of the disruption
According to monitoring website Downdetector, a spike in users reporting problems with Microsoft Teams in the UK was seen at about 6.15pm on Thursday. More than 130,000 users reported Outlook issues in the US at its peak last night.
Users from 74 countries reported issues with Microsoft services in the space of an hour on Thursday, according to Downdetector. On Friday (November 13), users from about 60 countries, mainly in Europe and Asia, continued to record trouble.
No sign of cyber attack
Microsoft executive vice-president Charles Lamanna said the outages did not appear to be the result of a cyber attack. Recent weeks have seen a number of airlines affected by online attacks, including in the UK.
With the firm saying earlier in the day that fixes to resolve the problem were not working 'as expected', millions of users are waiting for a resolution. The tech company is said to have 430 million total users worldwide.
