Microsoft 365 services were showing signs of recovery Friday after a disruption that left some users unable to access Outlook email and affected Teams, Copilot and other workplace tools. The outage extended into a second day and affected users in multiple regions.
What happened
Microsoft first identified the problem around noon ET Thursday, when it said users in the Americas were having trouble accessing Exchange Online mailboxes. The company later said the issue could affect users in any region. By Friday morning, Microsoft’s public status page listed service degradation for Microsoft 365 services.
Outlook users experienced problems connecting to email, and some messages took longer than usual to arrive. Teams and Copilot were also among the affected services. Because other artificial-intelligence products connect to Microsoft 365 tools, the disruption extended beyond Microsoft’s own applications.
- Outlook: Some users could not access email or experienced delayed messages.
- Teams and Copilot: Microsoft listed the collaboration and AI services among the affected tools.
- Connected AI services: Anthropic and OpenAI reported disruptions involving their connectors to Microsoft 365.
What Microsoft said Friday
In a 10 a.m. ET update, Microsoft said affected services were gradually recovering and that it was seeing “sustained improvements.” The company said it was working on the remaining problems and checking whether the recovery continued across the different ways users connect to its services.
Microsoft reported improving conditions in North America and “encouraging recovery signals” in the Asia-Pacific region. It also described recovery as improving in Europe. Anthropic said at 9:36 a.m. ET that it was seeing some recovery, while some services, including Claude Code connectors, remained degraded.
Charles Lamanna, Microsoft’s executive vice president of Copilot, Agents and Platform, said the company regretted the disruption and was reviewing what happened and how to prevent similar problems in the future.
“Encouraging recovery progress.”
Lamanna used those words to describe Microsoft’s assessment of the recovery. The company’s updates indicate that restoration was underway but that access problems could continue for some users while the remaining issues were addressed.
Why the outage matters
Microsoft 365 combines email, messaging, meetings, file-based work and AI features used by organizations and individuals. A disruption to the service can therefore affect several parts of a user’s work or school routine at once. The reported impact on Anthropic and OpenAI connectors also shows how services built by other companies can depend on access to Microsoft’s business software.
The incident also illustrates the difference between service recovery and a completed restoration. Microsoft said performance was improving across regions, while warning that some users could still have difficulty connecting or receiving email promptly. The company’s review of the incident is intended to examine both the cause of the disruption and ways to avoid similar problems.
