Microsoft has apologised to customers following a global service outage that disrupted its products across 74 countries and territories, affecting businesses, public institutions and individual users.
The technology company said on Friday that it was working to restore full services after thousands of users experienced difficulties accessing Outlook, Microsoft Teams and other applications.
The disruption began on Thursday, November 12, with users reporting problems accessing their email accounts and other Microsoft 365 services.
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According to outage-tracking platform Downdetector, the incident affected users across the Americas, Europe, Asia and Africa, with nearly 130,000 reports of Outlook-related problems recorded at the peak of the disruption.
Other affected services included Microsoft Teams, SharePoint, OneDrive and the AI assistant Copilot.
In a statement shared on social media, Microsoft apologised for the disruption, saying it understood the trust customers and partners placed in its services.
The company said it was observing broad recovery and improved stability across its platforms but was continuing efforts to restore services for users in affected regions.
Microsoft also ruled out a cyberattack or malicious artificial intelligence activity as the cause of the incident.
It attributed the disruption to a technical problem linked to an earlier network capacity upgrade, which surfaced following a subsequent network change.
The outage affected several organisations that depend on Microsoft's services for daily operations.
In the United Kingdom, some National Health Service staff experienced difficulties accessing patient information and handling referrals, while schools and businesses also reported communication problems.
Airlines in India, including IndiGo and Akasa Air, warned that disruptions to their email support services could affect their ability to receive customer enquiries.
Microsoft said it had addressed the underlying technical issue and was gradually restoring services while monitoring system stability.
The company is expected to release a detailed report on the incident after completing its internal investigation.
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