More than 430 million people use Microsoft 365 apps - a suite of subscription services including Outlook and Teams - according to Microsoft's website.

And more than 90% of Fortune 500 companies use Copilot, the company's AI chatbot, the company says.

Tracking platforms put the number of companies using Microsoft 365 at between three and four million.

If you're on our live page right now because your Microsoft office apps aren't working, then your company is probably one of them.

Osmond Chia
Business reporter

Microsoft has indicated that the outage is unlikely to have come from a cyber-attack.

But if that is the case, the issue stems from "incredible incompetence" that can potentially cost millions of dollars in economic impact if it continues, says Paul Spain from New Zealand-based advisory firm Gorilla Technology.

With e-mails and services offline, companies have practically "lost a business day", which is "frustrating" users, he added.

Image source, Getty Images

Australia's Home Affairs and Cybersecurity Minister Tony Burke says he's spoken to Microsoft officials in the country, who "do not believe they are dealing with a cyber event".

"They believe that they're dealing in some ways similar to what we saw with respect to CrowdStrike, where there is an update that has gone awry," Burke told reporters earlier today.

The impact from today's outage "is very much on email systems", Burke says.

"One of the things that we had with CrowdStrike was we then had a whole lot of downstream impacts where it was affected the capability of a whole range of other products," he notes.

Millions of people across the world were affected by a massive outage in July 2024 after CrowdStrike, an American cybersecurity company, released a faulty software update which froze Windows-operated computers.

Microsoft says in its latest update the changes meant to improve its services and fix the outage are "not taking as expected".

The firm is testing other ways to fix the issue to allow more users on to its platforms without overloading its systems.

It earlier warned that services that have restarted can become unresponsive again once they receive traffic.

Image source, Getty Images

Microsoft has platforms that are integrated with all sorts of other tech services, so some other major platforms have been impacted by the disruption.

AI giant OpenAI says it is investigating an issue affecting its connections to Microsoft's services, which has caused some tools to not work as expected.

Anthropic also says it has identified an issue affecting its links to Microsoft 365 services.

Monitoring website Downdetector says the Microsoft outage reached 74 countries in about one hour.

Reports of problems with Outlook peaked globally at nearly 140,000 around 18:00 GMT on Thursday - this is more than 2,000 times the normal level.

The issue has been ongoing for at least eight hours, Downdetector says. It added that problems were first detected at just after 16:15GMT Thursday.

The site now puts the current outage at more than 28,000 users affected with Microsoft saying that it is seeing "positive results" in its efforts to fix the issue.

Image source, Downdetector

Image source, Screenshot from X

Affected users have turned to memes and jokes to poke fun at the Microsoft outage and also reflect on life – corporate life, that is.

A scene from Nelly and Kelly Rowland's 2002 hit Dilemma, which shows Rowland typing messages into a spreadsheet, has repeatedly popped up on social media.

"With Outlook down, it’s time to be like Kelly Rowland and start sending emails through Excel," wrote a user on X. Their post was "liked" by 23,000 users and been shared nearly 3,000 times at time of writing.

Surmont, a real estate firm in the US, quipped on Instagram: "Days like today remind you that your entire job is just sending emails."

There was also hope...

One user wrote: "If Outlook doesn’t come back we are legally allowed to take the rest of the week off?"

Image source, Getty Images

Affected users may be unable to connect to a series of Microsoft 365 apps.

Notably, Microsoft's Exchange Online service - which includes the Outlook email app - is disrupted for many customers.

Users may also be unable to view certain files or details on their calendar apps, Microsoft says.

Its AI platform, Copilot, has also been disrupted.

Messaging and online meetings were largely functional, Microsoft says, adding that it is rushing to fix the issues.

Microsoft says it is racing to solve the global disruption of its apps.

In its latest update on X, it says its team is "seeing positive results" in its efforts to restart affected systems and is actively monitoring their performance.

The company earlier said that some services may become unresonsive again when they receive more traffic and that it is checking to see what is triggering the issue.

Microsoft has attributed the disruption to "elevated load" on its infrastructure in multiple regions.

That means that its servers - powerful computers that process that tasks like work tools and other apps - are handling more work than they can usually manage.

The issue isn't caused by an increase in traffic but a number of servers being "unexpectedly unavailable", straining the rest of the infrastructure, the Windows maker said on X.

A key part of affected servers is "becoming overwhelmed" causing the disruption, it later added.

Microsoft is struggling to fix a major global outage reportedly affecting tens of thousands of users including the US, Japan, Singapore, the UK and Australia.

Services include Teams, Outlook and Microsoft's artificial intelligence software Copilot have been affected by "connectivity problems".

It has been ongoing for at least the past eight hours. Reports of problems with Outlook peaked globally at nearly 140,000 around 18:00 GMT on Thursday, according to monitoring website Downdetector.

Stay with us as we bring you live updates.