Outlook down, Microsoft: 'Encouraging progress, sorry for customers'

Microsoft's outage is being resolved, but the tech giant's main services, including Outlook email, are still working intermittently. "We know our customers rely on our services to do important work every day, and we regret the impact these disruptions have had on those who count on us," the company explains in a new update published on its X account. "We are seeing encouraging signs of recovery, with service availability and email delivery performance improving across a growing portion of the affected infrastructure. We will continue to share more information as we have it," it adds. And, as it did in the previous hours, Microsoft rules out a cyberattack: "We can confirm that there is no indication that this is the result of malicious activity or a cyberattack. Our teams are investigating what happened and how we can prevent similar issues in the future." In the morning, Microsoft itself had reported that some servers brought back online could crash again once connected to the network. The outage affecting Microsoft's apps and websites also impacted third-party platforms, such as those of OpenAI and Anthropic. Both reported problems with the so-called "connectors," the integrations that link the chatbots to Microsoft 365 business accounts. Meanwhile, Microsoft is suffering on the Nasdaq at the start of trading: shares of the Redmond giant are down 1.48%, at $515.27, due to the global disruptions to Outlook, Teams and other platforms, affecting users, businesses and government systems in several countries. The company said restoration operations are underway, with delays in email reception potentially lasting up to 48 hours. All rights reserved © Copyright ANSA