“We have addressed the underlying issue and continue to restore service to remaining customers and regions,” Microsoft said in the post.
The disruption was caused by a technical issue and was not related to a cyberattack, artificial intelligence or agents, the company said.
“Given the scale of demand, we restored services gradually, validating stability at each stage,” Microsoft said. “While this took longer, it helped ensure a stable restoration.”
Microsoft said it will provide a full post-incident report when it completes its review.
The disruption included an outage of Outlook, Teams, Copilot and other Microsoft tools, Bloomberg reported Friday.
While Microsoft has been restoring service, the company warned users that they may continue to encounter errors when trying to use these tools, according to the report.
People in more than 70 countries have reported problems with the tools. Friday marks the second day in which there have been these problems, longer than the several hours that are typically the maximum amount of time there’s an outage on Microsoft tools. Users began reporting issues with the tools Thursday at around 1 p.m. Eastern, the report said.
Microsoft’s M365 bundle of productivity apps has more than 450 million commercial users, per the report.
Reuters reported Friday that the outage left people turning to telephones, faxes and Bluetooth to cope with the loss of email service.
The report said that firms told employees to use the phone, added capacity to teams to help them handle the additional workload, reminded staff not to use unauthorized channels, and urged customers to verify any unexpected communications.
PYMNTS reported Friday that the outage put on display the uncomfortable reality that the infrastructure businesses depend on is becoming increasingly difficult to maintain without disruption.
The service outage disrupted not only inboxes and workplace chats but also connections that allow AI assistants from other firms to work with Microsoft 365, exposing a practical vulnerability for businesses putting AI into daily operations, the report.
