'Deeply Sorry For Disruption': Microsoft Apologises For Global Outage, Rules Out Cyberattack As Cause

Microsoft has apologised to customers and partners after a global outage disrupted services such as Outlook, Microsoft Teams and Copilot, saying it was witnessing "broad recovery and stability" across its platforms.

The company attributed the disruption to a technical issue linked to an earlier network capacity upgrade, which surfaced after a recent network change. It clarified that the outage was not caused by a cyberattack or artificial intelligence (AI) agents.

"We are deeply sorry for the disruption this incident has caused our customers and partners. We know the trust they place in our services and take that responsibility extremely seriously. We are seeing broad recovery and stability across our services. This was a technical issue not related to cyber or AI/agents," Microsoft said in a statement posted on X.

"The incident was introduced by an issue during an earlier network capacity upgrade that surfaced following a recent network change," it added. 

Microsoft Says Services Being Gradually Restored

Microsoft said it had addressed the underlying technical issue and was working to restore access for customers and regions that continued to face disruptions.

Explaining the recovery process, the company said services were brought back in phases, with stability checks carried out at every stage to manage the scale of demand.

"While this took longer, it helped ensure a stable restoration. We will provide a full post-incident report once our review is complete," the company said.

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Outage Disrupted Services Across 74 Countries

The outage left millions of users unable to access Microsoft's services for nearly 18 hours, affecting businesses, schools, government agencies and airline operations across at least 74 countries, including the United States.

Outlook, Microsoft Teams and Copilot were among the major services affected. The disruption also hit airline operations worldwide, prompting major Indian carriers to issue advisories to passengers. AI service connectors used by OpenAI and Anthropic were also affected.

Data from outage-tracking platform Downdetector highlighted the scale of the disruption. Reports of Outlook outages peaked at 138,058 around 1 pm ET before falling to 34,490 by Thursday evening.

Complaints related to Microsoft 365 also dropped to nearly 13,000 by 5:47 pm ET, while 763 users reported issues with Teams during the same period.

Microsoft said it would release a detailed post-incident report after completing its review.