Microsoft confirmed its services are fully restored as of Saturday after the tech company faced a massive global outage impacting its platforms earlier in the week. “We have completed our efforts to address the underlying issue of the incident and restored service to the remaining impacted customers and regions,” the company wrote in a post…
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Microsoft confirmed its services are fully restored as of Saturday after the tech company faced a massive global outage impacting its platforms earlier in the week.
“We have completed our efforts to address the underlying issue of the incident and restored service to the remaining impacted customers and regions,” the company wrote in a post to social platform X just after midnight using its “Microsoft 365 Status” account, which provides official updates on service incidents.
A day after Thursday’s widespread outage, Microsoft said it was “seeing encouraging recovery progress” but added users may “experience intermittent issues.” It also noted at the time the incident was the result of a “technical issue” as opposed to a cyberattack or the interference of a rogue AI agents — both of which have made headlines in recent months.
The outage started at around 11:17 a.m. EST Thursday, impacting hallmark Microsoft platforms such as Outlook and Teams. The tech firm said the incident was “introduced by an issue during an earlier network capacity upgrade that surfaced following a recent network change.”
According to data from Downdetector, an online service issues tracker, the outage hit 74 countries within one hour. The incident caused interruptions across industries — including healthcare, banking and the government, among others, The Associated Press reported.
The United Kingdom’s National Pharmacy Association said in a statement Friday Microsoft email disruptions were affecting pharmacies’ ability to communicate with doctors.
In countries like Singapore, Japan, Greece and Norway, the outage impacted government operations, including email communications for certain ministries or agencies, according to the AP.
“We have addressed the underlying issue and continue to restore service to remaining customers and regions,” Microsoft said in a separate Friday statement.
“Given the scale of demand, we restored services gradually, validating stability at each stage. While this took longer, it helped ensure a stable restoration,” it added.
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