Service is gradually starting to recover for Microsoft Outlook and 365 after an almost two-day outage impacting millions of users around the world. While some applications and features remain in a degraded state, some individuals, including staff members at The Verge, report that email access has been restored, though email flow might experience delays as repair efforts proceed.
Recovery Progress and Official Statement
Charles Lamanna, who serves as the Copilot, agents, and platform leader at Microsoft, told The Verge in a statement that conditions are continuing to improve. Lamanna stated that the company is observing encouraging recovery progress alongside improving service availability and email delivery performance across expanding sections of the affected infrastructure. He acknowledged that customers rely on these services for daily work and expressed regret over the disruption, adding that teams are reviewing the incident to prevent future occurrences.
Cause and Scope of the Disruption
Senior Verge correspondent Tom Warren reported through sources that the outage is connected to Azure VNet configuration changes. Microsoft stated that it has found no evidence linking the disruption to malicious activity and promised a complete report once the issues are fully resolved. In a separate statement provided to Sky News tech correspondent Rowland Manthorpe, Microsoft characterized the incident as a technical issue and clarified that it has no relation to cyberattacks, artificial intelligence or agents, or distributed denial-of-service events.
The widespread technical failure also impacted capabilities within several other Microsoft platforms, such as SharePoint Online, Teams, Copilot AI, and various 365 applications. In a status update published shortly before 10:00 AM Eastern Time, Microsoft noted that some users might continue facing intermittent connection problems or delayed message delivery while restoration work continues.
