Microsoft says it is making “additional progress toward recovery” and that traffic is “being gradually restored” as its engineers scramble to fix the worldwide outage that has left millions without the work tools they use every day.
In a statement, Microsoft said it is “seeing improvements in key scenarios, including mailbox access and delayed email processing, though some intermittent issues may continue.”
Outlook is still down, as Microsoft’s rolling outage – now extending into a second day – continues to affect services for millions of people around the world.
The outage, which is also affecting Teams and Copilot, is disrupting government and business operations in the United States and elsewhere, with at least one company postponing a quarterly earnings call.
Microsoft executivesCharles Lamanna said in the early hours of Friday that there is currently no indication that the outage is the result “of malicious or cyber activity.”
Outlook remains down and users are also having trouble accessing their Exchange Online mailboxes.
In an update at around 4:15 a.m. ET Friday, Microsoft said it would extend its “email timeout window” to 48 hours “to help protect delayed messages while service recovery continues.”
The email timeout window is the maximum amount of time that a mail server or email client such as Outlook will spend waiting to receive an email before returning an error.
AI companies affected: OpenAI said it was facing issues with Microsoft connectors, with some tools, including ChatGPT, not working “as expected.” Meanwhile, thousands of Claude AI users reported issues Friday morning, according to Downdetector. Claude creator Anthropic said shortly after 6 a.m. ET that a fix had been deployed and it was “monitoring for recovery.”
US lawmakers: The US House of Representatives said the outage impacted its users and its engineers were working with Microsoft, according to Reuters. Some congressional staffers expressed frustration on X. “Shall we start conducting all official business via DM?” said Sharon Eliza Nichols, communications director for Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton.
US cities: City governments across the United States have reported email disruptions and have encouraged residents to call local offices and agencies if necessary.
Several police and sheriff departments said the outage was affecting their email and communication platforms, including Colorado’s Arapahoe Sheriff’s Office, which said the outage had delayed the processing of prisoners’ bail payments.
The outages are affecting email services in Miami Beach, Austin, and Jacksonville, though officials assured residents that emergency services were still active.
In California, officials from Pasadena, Fremont, Burbank, and Santa Barbara also issued statements warning of downed email use.
Baltimore County officials said on X that government staff could not send or receive emails and urged residents to contact relevant departments by phone.
