A major Microsoft outage has disrupted city governments across the United States, bringing everyday services that depend on the technology to a standstill.
The disruption began on Thursday and spread to 74 countries and territories within hours. Millions of people lost access to email, while systems used by banks, government agencies and courts also experienced failures.
Essential workplace tools, including Outlook, Teams meetings, cloud storage and file synchronization, were among the services affected.
In Colorado, the outage forced the Arapahoe County Detention Facility to suspend inmate releases through its online system, including for people who had been approved for bond.
The facility said the disruption was “affecting online bond payments.” Because officials rely on Outlook notifications to confirm that payment has been received, inmates were told they would need to post bond in person before they could be released.
With customers across numerous industries affected, Microsoft has been working to restore its services as quickly as possible.
By Friday morning, the company said it was seeing “encouraging recovery progress” and that traffic was “being gradually restored.” Some users also reported on social media that emails were beginning to reappear in their inboxes.
A major Microsoft outage has disrupted city governments across the United States, bringing everyday services that depend on the technology to a standstill
Microsoft said it was still investigating the cause of the outage and stressed that it was not the result of a cybersecurity breach or cyberattack.
The company said it would publish a “full post-incident report” after identifying the “root cause” of the widespread failure.
Millions of employees across a range of industries have seen their work interrupted, with the incident expected to rank among the largest technology outages ever recorded.
City and federal agencies have been forced to scale back operations. The House of Representatives said it had assigned engineers to assist Microsoft in restoring systems used by Congress.
Local legislatures around the country also reported being unable to conduct routine business. Officials in Baltimore County, for example, said government employees could not even contact their departments.
Employees in Jacksonville, Florida, and Austin, Texas, likewise said government systems had gone down.
The outage has also prompted warnings that scammers could target users who are desperate to regain access to their email accounts.
Banks and university IT departments have cautioned customers and staff about fake password-reset emails, texts asking them to verify their accounts and messages from impostors posing as IT personnel and requesting passwords or security codes.
In Colorado, the disruption forced the Arapahoe County Detention Facility to suspend online inmate releases, even for people who had been approved for bond
Microsoft says it is investigating the “root cause” of the outage. Pictured: CEO Satya Nadella
Old Dominion University in Virginia urged students and employees to be alert for suspicious login requests and warned them not to repeatedly reset their passwords. The university said sign-in errors linked to the outage were originating from Microsoft’s systems.
Scammers may also telephone users while pretending to work for Microsoft or an organization’s help desk. They could claim they can restore Outlook access in exchange for installing software or allowing remote access to a computer.
Other warning signs include demands for gift cards, wire transfers, cryptocurrency or payment-app transfers to unlock an account.
Microsoft says it does not make unsolicited calls about problems with users’ devices, and legitimate error messages do not contain a telephone number to call.
Anyone who receives an unexpected request should verify it with their IT department using a trusted, previously known contact method before taking any action.
The risk may continue even after services are restored, as criminals could keep impersonating technical-support staff.
Financial experts warned that the outage could produce “astronomical” market losses if it is not resolved quickly.
Samuel Mather-Holgate, managing director at Mather and Murray Financial, said: “This could become one of the most economically damaging technology outages in history.
“When Microsoft goes down, the world doesn’t just lose its emails — huge parts of the global economy effectively grind to a halt.
“It’s a terrifying demonstration of how fragile our modern economy has become. And next time, it could be even worse.”
The first outage reports emerged around midday Eastern Time on Thursday, and the disruption had reached more than 70 countries within hours.
The impact appeared especially broad across the Americas, where Microsoft initially confirmed that it was investigating problems affecting users trying to access their email accounts.
The company later said the failure had spread to several services, including Teams, OneDrive, Copilot and Microsoft 365.
The incident came only days after Outlook users were advised to update their software following the exploitation of a security flaw that could expose information used to verify their identities.
Microsoft said it had found no evidence that the outage was caused by a cyberattack.