Microsoft says its global Outlook outage is mostly over. The disruption ran for nearly two days and hit millions of users around the world. Email access returned for many people on Friday morning, though delivery delays remained.
Some Microsoft 365 apps still ran in a degraded state. Verge staffers reported that their inboxes loaded again after a long wait. Mail sent during the outage arrived slowly and in bursts, rather than in real time.
Microsoft posted an apology just before noon on Friday. The company said it was seeing broad recovery across its services. It also said the incident was a technical issue not related to cyber activity or AI agents.
The stated cause is a network problem. Microsoft says an earlier capacity upgrade surfaced issues after a recent network change. Engineers restored service gradually and checked stability at each stage, which stretched out the timeline.
Senior Verge correspondent Tom Warren reports that the outage is linked to Azure VNet configuration changes. Microsoft has not confirmed that detail publicly. It says it found no evidence of malicious activity and promised a full post-incident report.
The scale explains the caution. Outlook and 365 carry email for large companies, schools, and government offices. A slow return beats a second collapse, so Microsoft validated each region before moving to the next one.
For IT teams, the lesson is familiar. Network changes can stay quiet for weeks before they break something large. Microsoft says it will publish the review once the remaining regions are stable. Customers will want specifics rather than reassurance.
Users who still see errors should check the Microsoft 365 status dashboard. Mail flow may stay delayed as the backlog clears. The company has not given a final timeline for full restoration.
Source: The Verge.
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