Newshot 
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 apps and features are still running in a degradated state, some people (including Verge staffers) are reporting that access to their emails has been restored, though the flow of Outlook mail might be delayed while efforts to fully fix the outage continue.
The scope of the downtime is vast, affecting Outlook and Microsoft 365 features that interact with Exchange Online and email services, including SharePoint Online, Teams, Copilot AI, and other 365 business services. In its latest status page update, dated at 7AM ET on Friday, Microsoft said recovery efforts are going well:
We’re seeing encouraging recovery progress in Europe, with service availability and email delivery performance improving across a growing portion of affected Microsoft 365 infrastructure. Japan remains comparatively more stable, while North America is also improving; however, some users may still experience intermittent issues as recovery actions continue.We’re focused on addressing the remaining areas of disruption and improving service consistency across affected regions. Reducing email queues and backlogs remains a priority, and the extended 48-hour email timeout window remains in place to help protect delayed messages as delivery catches up.
We’re seeing encouraging recovery progress in Europe, with service availability and email delivery performance improving across a growing portion of affected Microsoft 365 infrastructure. Japan remains comparatively more stable, while North America is also improving; however, some users may still experience intermittent issues as recovery actions continue.
We’re focused on addressing the remaining areas of disruption and improving service consistency across affected regions. Reducing email queues and backlogs remains a priority, and the extended 48-hour email timeout window remains in place to help protect delayed messages as delivery catches up.
Microsoft added that it hasn’t found any evidence of the outage being connected to “malicious activity,” and that a full report detailing the root cause, and what actions were taken to fix it, will be shared after the issues are fully mitigated. Senior Verge correspondent Tom Warren reports that the outage is linked to Azure VNet config changes.
There’s still no ETA for a full restoration, but we will continue to monitor the situation.
- Jess Weatherbed