Microsoft outage hits 74 countries as Outlook, Teams, and Copilot fail

Microsoft's global outage affecting Outlook, Teams, and Copilot continues after initial fixes failed to work as expected, with the company reporting no signs of cyberattack. The disruption has impacted users across 74 countries and territories. The company attributed the failure to high load on its infrastructure causing connectivity errors, and acknowledged that measures including traffic redirection and server restarts have not resolved the issue. The Microsoft 365 cloud service has been unstable for over 15 hours, with peak reports recorded Thursday afternoon. The outage has disrupted stock market operations, forcing traders to use fax and phone, and caused chaos in the UK's NHS health service with appointment backlogs. Police and schools also face communication difficulties.