Microsoft said Friday it’s seeing “encouraging” progress in its push to restore service across various platforms.
On Thursday, users in Canada and across the globe reported issues accessing Outlook and the 365 suite. The outage caused issues at hospitals, Via Rail, and elsewhere.
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Microsoft has been trimming its workforce
Last month, Microsoft offered 60,000 employees, or about 27% of its workforce globally, voluntary buyouts. It's unclear how many workers have accepted such offers (and actual departures are reportedly scheduled for December). But the announcement arrived just months after Microsoft initiated 4,800 job cuts, notably in its Xbox video game business.
For the 4,800 layoffs announced in July, Microsoft's chief people officer Amy Coleman cited unspecified changes in customer needs and stated that the eliminated roles "are not being replaced by AI." Still, the broader workforce reductions arrive as the software giant spends heavily on artificial intelligence overall.
In its latest quarterly earnings, Microsoft raked in a profit of $36.63 billion and revenue of $92.28 billion, surpassing Wall Street expectations. The company continued to tout its AI and cloud-based investments.
Microsoft has not tied this week's outage to recent job reductions at the company.
People walk by an East Campus sign at Microsoft's headquarters Monday, Nov. 9, 2026, in Redmond, Wash. . (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)
‘Don’t put all your eggs in one basket’: Cyber expert
A tech and cybersecurity expert says Microsoft’s servers were overloaded, which led to them shutting down and causing the outage.
In a social media post Thursday afternoon, the tech giant said it had determined that a number of servers had shut down unexpectedly resulting in a strain on the remaining infrastructure.
“It can’t handle that traffic, so more servers start shutting down up until the point where there’s a global outage,” Ritesh Kotak told CTV News Channel Friday.
Kotak said it wasn’t as simple as just turning the servers back on.
“It’s more complicated than that. It has to be phased in, otherwise we’re going to be right back to where we started,” he said.
The cybersecurity expert said there was no indication of what caused the initial overload of the servers, which will eventually lead to some “difficult conversations.”
When asked whether there was a possibility of a hack, Kotak said: “it seems that this was a technical issue.”
According to Kotak, this leads to a larger issue of being too reliant on one particular platform.
“Don’t put all your eggs in one basket, because if this thing happens again, it could even be even longer, and more devastating.”
Ottawa City Hall, universities impacted
In a statement on its website, the City of Ottawa said it is experiencing “interruptions with some online services” due to the Microsoft outage, including emails.
“For any urgent issues about City services, please call 3-1-1,” the city said.
The University of Ottawa Heart Institute is warning the Microsoft global outage may be disrupting email. People are asked to use the clinic phone numbers and general inquiries phone line to contact the institute.
The University of Ottawa says several Microsoft 365 applications used by the university are experiencing technical issues. The uOttawa student portal operates on Microsoft.
Ottawa City Hall is seen in this undated file photo. (CTV News Ottawa)
Email queues returning to normal: Microsoft
“We’re continuing to see improvements in service availability, with email queues significantly reduced and approaching normal levels,” reads a post from the company published Friday morning.
“Some users may still experience intermittent access issues or delayed email delivery as recovery continues.”
Calgary services returning
‘We need to prepare more’
Widespread dependence on cloud-based services can cause major disruptions to everyone’s lives, according to tech expert Carmi Levy.
“We need to prepare more,” he told CTV Your Morning, suggesting that a “Plan B” could consist of making sure colleagues exchange phone numbers, text, and share their personal email addresses.
“It’s pretty significant. Their share values are off. Investors, the stock market, basically said ‘we are losing confidence in you,’ and so those numbers are down,” Levy said about the outage.
Microsoft Corp’s stock dropped sharply after the Nasdaq closed yesterday. And at 9:45 a.m. Friday, it was down half a point from Thursday’s close.
Second outage this year
The outage is one of the longest in Microsoft’s history and the second disruption to its services this year.
Microsoft said the outage specifically hit features tied to Exchange Online - its cloud-based email and scheduling hub - leaving unconnected applications operational.
The incident deepens questions about the global reliance on a handful of Big Tech companies that supply both the essential software and the cloud infrastructure that underpins it.
Microsoft shares fell 1.7 per cent before the bell, lagging the broader market. They have gained roughly eight per cent so far this year.
“The bigger worry is that this is not the first Microsoft 365 outage this year,” said Josh Gilbert, a market analyst at trading platform eToro.
“If reliability starts to look like a recurring problem, it hands every IT department a reason to think twice before putting even more of their business in one provider’s hands.”
Still, some analysts have questioned whether such incidents can push customers on to rivals due to the steep switching costs of replacing tools embedded so deeply in daily operations.
Microsoft faced an outage with its 365 services in January this year and also in October last year. Last month, it reported an outage of its Azure cloud platform that impacted its suite of productivity software, and a range of industries worldwide.
A person walks by a Microsoft logo and sign at the company's headquarters Monday, Nov. 9, 2026, in Redmond, Wash. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)
Recovery in North America
Microsoft says service is improving in North America and elsewhere.
“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,” wrote the company at around 8:30 a.m. ET.
“Some users may still experience intermittent access issues or delayed email delivery as mitigation continues across remaining affected infrastructure.”
“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,” wrote the company at around 8:30 a.m. ET.
“Some users may still experience intermittent access issues or delayed email delivery as mitigation continues across remaining affected infrastructure.”
A person walks by a Microsoft logo at the company's headquarters Monday, Nov. 9, 2026, in Redmond, Wash. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)
Old-school technology limits damage in Taiwan
Old-school technology including telephones, faxes and Bluetooth limited the damage for some people on Friday as a worldwide outage of Microsoft’s Outlook left millions without email.
In Taiwan, the outage disrupted fund management at securities firms, life insurers and investment trust companies, people familiar with the situation said.
At another financial firm, trades such as purchases and sales of short-term bills, which are normally confirmed by email, had to be confirmed by fax instead, one of the people said.
Foreign banks and financial institutions in Taiwan were hit especially hard, a trader said, because much of their data is emailed to overseas headquarters through Microsoft’s systems.
911 still works in Peel
Peel Regional Police, the multi-jurisdictional Ontario force, says 911 calls are not affected by the outage. But, some requests for records checks could be delayed.
A Peel Regional Police logo is seen in Ottawa, on Sunday, Sept. 28, 2025. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Spencer Colby
SickKids services returning
SickKids hospital in Toronto writes its Microsoft issues are largely resolved, but anyone having issues reaching clinicians can call (416) 813-1500 for urgent matters.
Yesterday, the hospital said some phone calls and emails were not going through as a result of the outage, encouraging people to go to an ER if they weren’t able to reach SickKids staff during an emergency.
Users still reporting issues
Third-party outage tracker Downdetector logged just under 10,000 reports of impacted services in the U.S., and just over 2,000 in Canada, at around 8:30 a.m. ET.
A person walks past a sculpture version of Microsoft's logo at the company's headquarters Monday, Nov. 9, 2026, in Redmond, Wash. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)
Interruptions around the world
- Air India said its flight operations were unaffected by the global Microsoft outage. However, it temporarily rerouted its email services to ensure customer queries continued to reach the airline without interruption, the company said in a statement.
- IndiGo, another Indian airline company, said it also reported disruptions to its email support services, which affected its ability to receive customer queries. The airline in a statement on X said its other support channels remained operational and its flight operations were unaffected.
- Singapore's Government Technology Agency said that government emails were down and that the agency is working with Microsoft to resolve the issue.
- The Philippines' Supreme Court said in a statement on X that the ongoing Microsoft 365 service outage has affected some of its operations, including email responses.
- In Japan, Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Masanao Ozaki said the outage impacted the government's IT infrastructure and that they were "keeping a close eye on the developments." Japanese authorities had taken steps, including securing alternative communication tools such as telephones, the government said.
Microsoft prioritizing email queue
U.K. police can’t receive online reports
The British government said it is “working closely” with Microsoft to assess any impact on public services but that “robust contingency plans” are in place to minimize disruption.
British police forces said they’re unable to receive crime reports online and are urging people to call emergency responders to make any urgent reports.
What is Microsoft saying?
The Redmond, Wash.-based company said it was trying different ways to identify the cause of the problem and get its servers back online, using “a measured approach to identify and repair affected infrastructure.”
The company said it did not have any indication that the outage was caused by malicious activity and would treat the incident “with urgency and priority until full resolution.”
A series of posts by the company on X suggested its engineers were struggling to get the problem fully under control.
Hours after saying it managed to successfully restore service health and functionality, the company said it had updated its list of impacted services and was continuing to address the issue.
An earlier post offered little hope for users expecting a quick resolution.
“We’ve monitored the status of the changes applied to improve serviceability and confirmed they’re not taking as expected,” the company wrote.
In a pair of more recent updates on Friday, Microsoft said “we’re seeing early stabilization and capacity improvements as recovery actions continue.”
