Microsoft Says Email Backlog ‘Approaching Normal’ After Outage Paralyzes Outlook
Microsoft says that more than a hundred million users may finally be able to use their emails after a nearly day-long outage.
Microsoft says that more than a hundred million users may finally be able to use their emails after a nearly day-long outage.
The tech giant announced “sustained improvements” in recovery efforts after an outage blocked more than 130,000 Outlook users from accessing their inboxes and disrupted Outlook, Teams, Copilot and other Microsoft 365 services, according to the company’s service status page. The company found “no evidence of malicious activity” and plans to release an incident report on the cause of the outage.
While there is no evidence of a cyberattack or malicious activity, this is the fourth major outage the company has faced in 2026.
Microsoft 365 services are still facing “service degradation” at the time of reporting, according to the company’s Service Health Status page.
“We’re seeing continued recovery progress across affected regions, with broader improvements in North America, sustained improvements across much of Europe, and encouraging recovery signals in Asia Pacific,” the company said in a Microsoft 365 Status X post Friday morning. “Our focus remains on stabilizing recovered infrastructure, completing mitigation in remaining impacted areas, and reducing delayed email queues and backlogs while we validate service consistency across connection methods.”
The company said users could still face “intermittent access issues” and the situation was progressively improving.