Representative image (AP photo)

Microsoft has begun restoring services after a widespread global outage disrupted access to its Microsoft 365 suite, including Outlook, Teams, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, SharePoint and OneDrive.The company said a portion of the affected servers had been returned to service and remained stable so far, while it was shifting traffic to alternative routes to ease the disruption.“We’re returning a portion of affected servers to the service, and they remain stable so far,” Microsoft said in an update. It added that it had observed limited recovery after moving traffic and connections to alternative pathways wherever possible.The company said it had also streamlined the process of bringing the remaining affected servers back online. However, it cautioned that servers restored to service could become unresponsive again once they started receiving traffic.“In parallel, we’re temporarily limiting which types of traffic can reach the affected infrastructure in some locations,” Microsoft said.

Nearly 130,000 users report problems

The outage affected Microsoft’s email, workplace communication and cloud-based services, with nearly 130,000 users worldwide reporting problems at the peak, according to outage tracker Downdetector.Users reported difficulties accessing Outlook, sending and receiving emails and loading inboxes. Thousands also reported disruptions to Teams, Microsoft’s AI assistant Copilot and other Microsoft 365 applications.Microsoft initially said it was investigating reports of users experiencing problems accessing Exchange Online mailboxes through multiple connection methods.The company later identified elevated load across part of its infrastructure as a likely reason for the connectivity errors. It said several servers had become unexpectedly unavailable after failing automated health checks, shifting additional traffic onto the remaining infrastructure.Microsoft said the elevated load was not being caused by an overall increase in traffic, but by the reduced availability of servers.

Microsoft works to bring affected servers back online

In its recovery updates, Microsoft said it had validated an alternative health-check method on a subset of affected servers, allowing them to return to service. It then began applying the fix more widely.The company also worked on an automated process to detect and restart unresponsive servers. A review of recent changes identified configuration updates as a possible cause of the disruption, although the investigation was continuing.Microsoft said it had paused deployments and configuration changes while examining whether recent updates were linked to the outage.The company also said a core process on the affected servers was becoming overwhelmed, causing them to stop responding. Earlier recovery measures had not provided the expected relief, prompting it to pursue additional ways to restore services.Microsoft had earlier reported that it had successfully restored issues affecting Teams in North America, although some users continued to experience connectivity problems, according to news agency AP.The company has not provided a definitive cause for the wider outage in the updates.

Experts warn of cascading disruption

Mark Gregory, an associate professor in the School of Engineering at RMIT University, told The Guardian that the disruption appeared to be affecting the network layer of Microsoft’s systems.He said the unavailability of some servers could force users to rely on a smaller pool of remaining infrastructure, increasing the load on those servers and potentially causing further failures.Gregory described this as a “cascading problem” and said identifying the underlying issue, which he suggested could involve a network configuration problem, would take time.He also said companies should invest in testing environments for configuration changes before deploying them on live networks. Businesses relying on cloud services such as Microsoft 365 should maintain alternative options, he added.The outage also affected integrations connecting AI services to Microsoft’s platforms. OpenAI and Anthropic reported problems with the Microsoft 365 connectors used by ChatGPT and Claude, respectively, according to The Guardian.Microsoft said customers could experience a gradual recovery as users reconnect to its services.