Microsoft Corp. is struggling to restore access to some of its flagship software more than nine hours after an outage began, leaving users unable to use email and chat services in one of the tech giant’s most severe disruptions in recent memory.
Outlook, Teams and the Copilot artificial intelligence service were unavailable for most of the US workday on Thursday for some users. Microsoft’s products are among the most widely used software among business, government and educational institutions.
The outage, which attracted about 200,000 reports of user issues across Microsoft services on Downdetector, ranks among the company’s most severe. Previous disruptions have rarely lasted more than several hours. Microsoft shares were down 0.4% in extended trading.
In a series of updates to its status page, the company detailed frustrated efforts to fix its malfunctioning systems and route user traffic away from affected servers. After initially struggling to identify the issue and test potential remedies, the company said in an update that it’s “seeing positive results with our efforts to restart affected infrastructure.”
Though the number of new reports has slowed, services have not been restored.
Citing the outage, Workhorse Group Inc., a truck and bus manufacturer, said it would postpone its earnings release, originally scheduled for Thursday, until Monday. School districts, universities and hospitals were among those warning that communications might be limited.
“We’re continuing to pursue all available pathways to restore service, as our actions taken thus far have not provided the anticipated relief,” the company said in an earlier update. “Our investigation has found that a core process on the affected servers is becoming overwhelmed, which causes the servers to stop responding and contributes to the capacity loss.”
Over the course of the day, the company added to its tally of the number of products users might fail to access. Services for technologists, including cybersecurity software, file-sharing services and administrator tools, were also disrupted.
The company sells those products, along with workplace staples like Word and Excel, in a bundle under the M365 brand.
In a separate post on X earlier Thursday, Microsoft said users “in any region” could be affected.
The Japanese government’s shared IT platform is also experiencing disruptions, Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Masanao Ozaki said at a regular press conference.
This report is auto generated from the Bloomberg news service. ThePrint holds no responsibility for its content.