Latest. German media have linked the outage to injuries at a German theme park hotel. BILD reported on Saturday that a chlorine gas release at a hotel pool at Phantasialand, near Cologne, on Friday was caused by too much chlorine entering the pool because of the worldwide Microsoft disruption, and WDR reporting carried in the feed queue made the same link, with the outage said to have disrupted email based monitoring of the pool dosing system. Fifteen people were treated at the scene and five were taken to hospital, one of them moderately injured, after about 40 firefighters ventilated the area. Officials quoted in a summary of their statements attributed the release to an apparent technical defect in the chlorination system and said the technical investigation is ongoing; they have not confirmed a connection to the outage.
Latest. Microsoft said on Saturday morning that service was fully restored. On its Microsoft 365 status page the company said it had completed its work on the underlying issue and restored service to the remaining impacted customers and regions, pointing admins to incident MO1550821 for further updates, The Guardian reported. The statement closes the restoration phase of an outage that began around midday on Thursday in the United States, reached 74 countries and territories within an hour by Downdetector’s count, and hit governments, courts, hospitals, airlines and banks; Microsoft has said the incident was not related to cyber activity or AI agents and was introduced by an issue during an earlier network capacity upgrade that surfaced after a recent network change.
Latest. Singapore restored most email services on Saturday after an outage the Straits Times described as one of the longest in Microsoft’s history. Government agencies including the Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore, the Singapore Land Authority, SingHealth and the Singapore Police Force said their email was back, as did DBS, UOB and Maybank, whose core banking operations were unaffected, and two universities; Singapore’s Government Technology Agency had confirmed on Friday that some government systems were hit. Microsoft, in an update posted at 12:40 a.m. Singapore time on Saturday, said it was seeing “broad recovery and stability” across its services and would publish a full post-incident report, and it clarified the cause: an issue during an earlier network capacity upgrade that surfaced following a recent network change, unrelated to cyber activity or AI agents. Reuters reported Downdetector logged more than 7.4 million problem reports worldwide, peaking at nearly 20,000 a minute.
Latest. Microsoft apologised for the outage on Friday and pointed to a likely cause. The company said it was “deeply sorry,” that it had addressed the underlying issue and was continuing to restore services gradually to keep the restoration stable, and that the disruption was a technical issue unrelated to cyber-attacks or AI agents. It suggested the outage may have been caused by problems with the settings applied to the servers responsible for keeping Microsoft 365 running. In Australia, where the Guardian reported the impact in detail, hospitals and clinics returned in places to paper prescriptions because prescribing software authentication depends on Microsoft-supported email, courts in South Australia and Victoria reported their email systems affected, schools were hit across the country, and the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation said its systems were affected on one level but not completely. The Australian Computer Society renewed its call for the federal government to review urgently which critical systems depend on a single provider.
Latest. The outage passed 27 hours on Friday evening with no recovery time in sight. In its latest status update, issued at 20:02 UTC and carried by The Register, Microsoft said the affected infrastructure was in the process of stabilising and that it was still draining queued messages and rebalancing traffic, so customers may see improved sign-in and access while delivery and processing continue to catch up. “We do not have an ETA for full recovery yet,” the company said, noting that service access can recover before mail flow fully normalises, and it promised a further update by Saturday at 00:00 UTC.
Latest. Recovery continued through Friday afternoon without the incident being closed. Microsoft said at about 14:06 UTC that email queues were significantly reduced and approaching normal levels, and a status summary timed 18:15 South African time reported continued recovery across the affected regions, with the company clearing a backlog of delayed email, holding delayed mail for up to 48 hours, and repeating that it had no evidence of malicious activity behind the incident, while warning that a slow mailbox or late message was still possible. In Britain, Lewisham and Greenwich NHS Trust told patients at 3:40 p.m. London time that Microsoft 365 services were being restored across the trust, with intermittent service expected for a further four to five hours. Microsoft has still given no time for full restoration and has promised a full post-incident report once the work is complete.
Latest. The outage passed 18 hours on Friday with recovery still uneven. Microsoft’s status update at 12:00 UTC said users remained unable to connect to multiple Microsoft 365 services, and its 13:00 UTC update reported continued recovery progress, with broader improvements now observed in North America, sustained improvements across much of Europe and encouraging recovery signals in Asia Pacific, while warning that some users may still face intermittent access problems or delayed email delivery. The Register reported that in Australia the disruption was being called the “Microsoft long weekend,” with Friday close to a write-off at organisations that rely on Exchange Online. No time for full restoration has been given.
Latest. Microsoft’s language turned more positive early on Friday. In a statement shared on social media, the company said it was “seeing encouraging recovery progress,” that some users may still experience intermittent issues as recovery actions continue, and that it was focused on recovery for the remaining affected environments while prioritising email queue and backlog reduction, The Hill reported. The company gave no time for full restoration, has not shared a cause, and said the disruption was not caused by a cybersecurity breach. The Hill also carried fresh impact reports, including the City of Austin’s Thursday evening advisory that its employees could not send or receive email, and a Colorado sheriff’s office saying its online bond payment platform was affected, with bond posting in person until Outlook is restored.
Latest. Microsoft’s recovery work was still not holding on Friday. The Register, reviewing the company’s status feed, reported that the outage that began around 18:00 UTC on Thursday had stretched past 12 hours, that changes applied to improve serviceability were “not taking as expected,” and that partial recovery in some regions was “not resulting in sustained recovery,” with virtual machines stuck in a bad state preventing changes from syncing. Microsoft also softened its wording on the cause: an update at 04:11 UTC said there was “no indication this is the result of malicious activity,” while a later update at 05:46 UTC said only that the company was “not aware of any malicious activity that is causing this incident.” Its latest update gave no time for full restoration.
Latest. The outage’s second day brought its sharpest public-service impact in Britain. NHS sources told the Guardian the health service was facing widespread and serious disruption, with staff arriving on Friday morning unable to access email and systems used to deliver care, meetings cancelled across the board, and some NHS organisations asking patients to telephone instead of emailing. Ambulance services were also affected, though the GMB union said emergency and life-threatening callouts appeared unaffected. Pharmacies warned of delays to prescriptions because they could not reach GP surgeries by email, and the National Pharmacy Association said waits for medicines would be longer than normal. Six police forces, the Metropolitan, Northampton, Hertfordshire, South Wales, Dyfed-Powys and Dorset, reported their systems affected, and access to Microsoft products used by MPs was down. Government engineers were working with Microsoft to assess the impact, and the company said on Friday morning it was seeing early signs of stabilisation, with no time set for full restoration.
The outage passed 12 hours early on Friday and was still continuing, with Microsoft giving no expected time for full recovery. Yonhap’s comprehensive account said United States Outlook problem reports were still above 25,000 at 9:30 p.m. Eastern on Thursday, down from more than 130,000 at the peak, and that the disruption reached the United States House of Representatives, Japan’s government common IT platform, Australia’s intelligence agencies and federal police and New Zealand’s foreign ministry missions worldwide. Vehicle maker Workhorse Group postponed its earnings announcement from November 12 to November 16 because of the disruption, and OpenAI and Anthropic reported problems with connectors linking to Microsoft services. Microsoft said Teams in North America had been restored, that positive results were appearing in its server restart work, and confirmed the outage was not the result of a malicious attack or cyber activity.
The outage reached 74 countries and territories within about an hour, Downdetector reported, and around 130,000 users in the United States reported Outlook problems shortly after 1 p.m. Eastern, with reports down to about 37,000 by 6 p.m. Microsoft said it had paused all deployments, was moving additional traffic off the affected infrastructure and restarting affected servers, and shortly after 6 p.m. said it was observing limited recovery, with users likely to reconnect gradually as capacity returned. Full service had not been restored.
Microsoft suffered a widespread outage on Thursday that began shortly before 1 p.m. Eastern and disrupted Microsoft 365 services, Outlook and Teams for thousands of users across regions, according to Downdetector reports cited by CNBC. The company said it was investigating issues primarily with Exchange Online, and later traced the disruption to servers that had become unexpectedly unavailable and were failing automated health checks, leaving elevated load on the remaining infrastructure. At 4 p.m. Microsoft said an alternative health check method had brought some affected servers back online and was being applied more broadly, while Amazon Web Services said its own services were operating normally despite user reports on Downdetector.