A Microsoft 365 disruption affected millions from Thursday into Friday, interrupting access to workplace apps, email and collaboration services in an uneven pattern, The Guardian reported.
Down Detector showed nearly 130,000 reports at about 1 p.m. ET Thursday (18:00 GMT), across 74 countries, according to The Guardian. Reports included OneDrive and SharePoint, plus Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Outlook and Teams.
Microsoft said an issue caused some servers to fail during automated checks, leaving them unexpectedly unavailable. The company suggested server settings may have been involved, The Guardian reported. Mark Gregory of RMIT University offered cascading overload as another possible explanation, but the report did not establish it as the cause.
The outage affected users, organizations and businesses that rely on Microsoft 365. Its effects varied by user and service, the report said.
The Guardian also noted a Microsoft Azure outage the previous month. Gregory said the incident may resemble Optus' 2023 network configuration issue.
