A major global Microsoft outage is preventing some online crime reports from reaching UK police forces, including Merseyside Police, which has warned that website submissions may not be getting through.
The disruption is affecting online forms, meaning members of the public may be unable to submit reports through the usual channels. Merseyside Police has advised anyone whose report is time-critical but does not require an emergency response to contact the force by calling 101. Anyone facing an emergency should continue to call 999.
Force issues guidance during outage
A message on the force's website reads: "Due to a global Microsoft service issue, some online form submissions may be affected. If your report is time-critical but not an emergency, please call 101."
"In an emergency, call 999."
The problems began late on Thursday afternoon, leaving hundreds of thousands of users worldwide struggling to access Microsoft's services, including Outlook, Teams and other Microsoft 365 applications.
Widespread disruption to Microsoft services
Thousands of users reported difficulties sending and receiving emails through Outlook, while Microsoft's Teams messaging platform, Copilot AI assistant and several cloud-based services were also affected.
Monitoring website Downdetector recorded a sharp increase in reports of problems with Microsoft Teams in the UK at around 6.15pm on Thursday. Reports of Outlook issues also surged, reaching almost 130,000 at their peak.
Microsoft executive vice-president Charles Lamanna said the disruption did not appear to have been caused by a cyber attack.
Recovery efforts continue
The technology giant said it had attempted several measures to restore services, including isolating parts of its infrastructure and redirecting traffic through alternative routes. However, the company admitted its efforts were not progressing as expected.
In a statement, Microsoft said: "We've monitored the status of the changes applied to improve serviceability and confirmed that change is not taking as expected."
In an update on Friday (November 13), the company said it had managed to bring servers back online several times overnight, UK time, but they had subsequently crashed. The outage has affected a number of Microsoft's most widely used products, including Outlook, Teams, Copilot and aspects of its cloud services.
OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, also reported problems linked to the disruption. In a statement on its website, the company said: "We're investigating an issue with Microsoft connectors where new connections may be broken and tools are not working as expected. We'll share an update when we know more."
International impact
Microsoft has been providing regular updates through its official Microsoft 365 channels. However, some users previously reported difficulties accessing the company's dedicated service status page.
The disruption has also affected organisations and government services internationally, with outages reported in countries including Australia, India and Japan.
