Microsoft's suite of workplace products, including Outlook email service and Copilot AI assistant, remained severely disrupted on Friday as a global outage extended into its second day, affecting millions of users and major businesses worldwide [1]. The disruption began Thursday afternoon and crippled Exchange Online, the underlying engine powering Microsoft's email infrastructure [1]. Microsoft ruled out malicious activity, stating "we have no evidence of malicious activity associated with this incident" [1]. By Friday morning, many Outlook users were still unable to access their inboxes or send and receive emails as engineers worked to clear email queues and backlogs [1].
Microsoft reported recovery progress across Europe and the Asia Pacific region by Friday morning, with Japan remaining "comparatively more stable" and North America also improving by 7 a.m. ET, though the company cautioned that "some users may still experience intermittent issues as recovery actions continue" [1]. To protect delayed messages, Microsoft extended its email timeout window to 48 hours, allowing emails caught in the backlog since Thursday afternoon until at least Saturday afternoon to reach recipients once systems recover [1]. Beyond email, the outage disrupted key scheduling and productivity tools, including calendar viewing, meeting invite sending, and event editing [1]. The disruption also prevented users from viewing recently used files in Word, Excel and PowerPoint, blocked external file sharing in SharePoint Online, and left Copilot unable to load chats, generate responses, or pull data from emails, calendars and files [1].
The outage significantly impacted major corporations and technology firms [1]. Indian airlines IndiGo and Akasa Air reported problems with their customer-support email systems, while Air India temporarily rerouted its email services [1]. Leading artificial intelligence firms OpenAI and Anthropic were also affected, with both companies reporting ongoing issues with their Microsoft 365 integration tools [1].
CONCLUSION
Microsoft's second-day global outage of Outlook and Microsoft 365 services represents a significant operational disruption affecting millions of users and major corporations including airlines and AI companies. While Microsoft reported recovery progress across multiple regions by Friday morning and ruled out malicious activity, the extended 48-hour email timeout window and continued intermittent issues underscore the severity of the incident's impact on business continuity and productivity.