LIVE: Outlook and Teams are starting to come back for some Australian users as Microsoft rolls out its fix in stages, but it warns service is still patchy and not yet back to normal. Here’s everything you need to know.
Key Takeaways
- Outlook, Teams and other Microsoft 365 apps were down for Australian users and businesses worldwide for more than 17 hours from early Friday, and are only now starting to return.
- Microsoft says its fix is rolling out in stages, but service is still patchy and there’s no time for a full recovery.
- It wasn’t caused by a rush of users or, Microsoft says, a cyber attack. Some servers that run these services stopped working and left the rest overloaded.
- In Australia, Service NSW, NSW Parliament, the ACT and NT governments, councils and Queensland Health have all been hit, AAP reported.
Outage Timeline
Saturday
2.39am Microsoft says recovery is spreading and apologises, saying it “regret[s] the impact” on customers who rely on its services. Still no word on when everything will be fully back.
12.32am Microsoft says the US and much of Europe are largely back, but Asia Pacific, including Australia, is only showing “encouraging” signs.
Friday
11.09pm Microsoft says email and services are improving for more users and it is working through the backlog of delayed mail. Some users may still have problems on and off.
9.28pm Microsoft says its fix is now rolling out in stages and several services are improving, but it warns things are still patchy and capacity isn’t back to normal. Delayed emails will still be held for 48 hours.
10.11pm Microsoft says more progress has been made and traffic is gradually being restored. Mailbox access and delayed emails are improving, but some users may still see problems on and off.
9.50pm Still no full fix. Microsoft’s 8.24pm update is its most positive yet, but it hasn’t said when Outlook and Teams will be fully back.
8.24pm Microsoft says services are starting to steady and more capacity is coming back. Emails stuck during the outage will now be held for 48 hours instead of bouncing, so delayed mail should still arrive.
7.00pm Still no full fix. Microsoft’s 6.44pm update is its most hopeful yet, but it has given no time for when services will be back.
6.44pm Microsoft says its latest traffic changes are finally showing “positive results”, with servers more stable and more capacity, and it is now rolling them out to other affected regions. It promises a fuller update soon.
3.36pm Microsoft says it is redirecting and blocking some traffic to keep servers steady, and some regions are now partly working again.
2.48pm Microsoft says it is reviewing how traffic moves through its systems to work out why servers keep failing.
2.13pm Microsoft admits its latest fixes “are not taking as expected” and says it is looking for other ways to get more servers working.
12.59pm Microsoft says bringing servers back a few at a time is starting to work, and it is watching to make sure they stay up.
11.06am Setback: servers Microsoft had brought back freeze again as soon as people start using them. It starts limiting some traffic while it works out why.
10.04am Some servers are back up and a few regions are partly working again.
9.09am Microsoft says nothing it has tried so far has worked, and finds software on the broken servers is getting overloaded.
8.40am Microsoft starts restarting servers and weighs undoing some recent changes to its systems.
8.00am A new way of checking server health gets some servers back online.
6.12am Microsoft pauses all updates to its systems, moves traffic away from the broken servers and starts restarting them.
5.07am Microsoft warns users anywhere in the world could be affected.
4.54am Microsoft reports problems with work email in the Americas. The outage begins.
Impacted Services
- Outlook: work email
- Microsoft Teams
- SharePoint Online
- Microsoft 365 Copilot
- Microsoft Planner
- Microsoft To Do
- Microsoft Intune: the tool IT teams use to manage staff laptops and phones
- Microsoft Defender XDR: security monitoring
- Microsoft Defender for Office 365: email security and spam filtering
- Microsoft Purview: tools that stop sensitive company data leaking
- Power BI: some users can’t save confidential reports as PDFs
- Microsoft 365 Apps Admin Center: IT tools for updating and managing Office apps
- Universal Print: office printing
Big Number
120,000. That’s how many Outlook outage reports Downdetector had logged worldwide by 4.30am AEDT, before most of the Australian workforce had logged on.
Key Background
The outage follows disruptions to Microsoft 365 in January and August this year.
On January 22, Outlook, Teams and other 365 services were down for hours before Microsoft said the issue was fixed.
In August, a code update rollout disrupted logins and email, and full recovery took a few days. Today’s affected services include Exchange Online, Teams, SharePoint Online, Microsoft 365 Copilot and Defender XDR.
This is a developing story. More to come.
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