Microsoft Meltdown: Global Friday 13th outage cripples police, NHS and schools as frantic fixes fail

Microsoft is firefighting an online outage which has impacted several services, including Outlook, Microsoft Teams, and its Copilot AI assistant. These applications — widely used across the NHS and GP surgeries, Government departments, schools and universities, airlines and businesses — are part of its Microsoft 365 suite.

Despite multiple attempts to remedy the situation, the blackout has now dragged on for over 16 hours.

Executive Charles Lamanna said the outage is not "the result of malicious or cyber activity", but stopped short of revealing what is behind the ongoing issues. Artificial intelligence giant OpenAI said some tools connected to Microsoft were not working as expected as a result of the outage. And AI rival Anthropic also said it was suffering problems.

The 2024 CrowdStrike outage cost Fortune 500 businesses an estimated £5.4billion.

More than 5,000 flights worldwide were grounded as a result of the technical disruption, leaving hundreds of British holidaymakers frustrated.

Hundreds of Britons were then left stuck in queues for the ferry crossing at Dover as they sought alternative ways to travel.

Surge in reports as millions of Britons attempt to login at work

As millions of Britons attempt to log in to online systems, send an email, or join a call on Microsoft Teams, reports of issues with Microsoft have surged. Independent service Down Detector, which checks mentions across social media to assess the health of online services and apps, is tracking 8,000 reports in the UK.

When the outage first started at 6pm last night, Down Detector showed just 3,000 reports in the UK.

Online consultation services experiencing difficulties 

The worldwide outage is having a "serious impact" across ambulance and NHS trusts, the GMB union has stated.

Rapid Health, an online consultation system used by GP practices across the UK, is experiencing difficulties this morning, the National Health Service has confirmed. This is designed to triage patients to ease pressure on surgeries, but the outage is forcing patients to call their GP practice.

If your GP surgery is impacted, expect a text message urging you to call reception for any urgent medical problems.

Calls to 999 remain unaffected by this worldwide outage.

Emergency care and treatment in your local surgery remains unaffected, Dr. Renee Hoenderkamp told GB News. However, there could be delays when sending scans and results to patients and other clinics. That's because Microsoft underpins many of the email systems used throughout the NHS.

The ongoing outage is limiting pharmacies’ ability to communicate with GP practices and some patients. As such, the UK National Pharmacy Association has warned that waits may be longer for prescriptions.

Shoppers 'unable' to use services

Asda has warned they have been affected by the Microsoft 365 outage, including new customer registrations and password resets.

A message on the website reads: "Due to an ongoing Global Microsoft Service Disruption, new customers are unable to complete the registration process.

"Customers are also unable to perform password reset or email change operations."

Universities across the UK plunged into chaos

Oxford, Cambridge and Cardiff Universities have updated their websites to warn students that multiple Microsoft 365 services have been affected.

Cardiff University wrote: "The University is currently experiencing an interruption to Microsoft services, including Email and Copilot, due to a widespread, global Microsoft outage impacting over 70 countries.

"The outage has been ongoing for over 14 hours. Email, Copilot and Viva Engage are currently down, and potentially no email will have been delivered since the incident started yesterday evening."

Doncaster College said: "We are aware of the ongoing global disruption affecting Microsoft services, including Outlook, Microsoft Teams and other Microsoft 365 applications.

“The College remains open as usual. All students should attend College and follow their normal timetable.

“Some online services and communication systems may be temporarily affected while the Microsoft outage continues."

Police forces across the UK impacted

Millions of Britons have been left unable to report crimes online. Police forces across the UK rely on Microsoft systems to power its online form, which is used to report non-emergency crimes online. This is to alleviate strain on the phone lines, including 999 and the non-emergency 101 number.

If you attempt to report a crime online via the online form today, you’ll be met with a warning that reads: “Due to a global Microsoft service issue, some online form submissions may be affected. If your report is time-critical but not an emergency, please call 101. In an emergency, call 999.”

Outages around the world

Downdetector, an internet monitoring website, said 74 countries reported problems with Microsoft services in one hour, with direct reports to the website peaking at nearly 140,000 around 6pm on Thursday.

More than 430 million people use Microsoft 365 services, while between three and four million businesses rely on it.

This includes governments worldwide.

Services NSW, which provides a range of Government services in Australia's state of New South Wales, urged visitors to delay their in-person visits and complete transactions online where possible.

Singapore's Government confirmed the outage had affected some of its systems but "emergency services remain fully operational".

The US House of Representatives also said its users were experiencing problems and its engineers were now liaising with Microsoft.

If the outage hits 24 hours, it could be the "most severe technology outage in history" and impact billions of dollars in operations, New Zealand-based tech analyst Paul Spain told the BBC.

Microsoft 'do not believe they are dealing with a cyber hack event'

Australia's Home Affairs and Cybersecurity Minister Tony Burke said he had spoken to Microsoft officials who "do not believe they are dealing with a cyber hack event".

He said the outage was similar to the 2024 CrowdStrike incident, when an update-gone-wrong grounded flights, left companies unable to accept payments, and cut a Sky News broadcast.

"One of the things that we had with CrowdStrike was we then had a whole lot of downstream impacts where it was affected the capability of a whole range of other products," he said.

What has Microsoft said?

Microsoft, in an update, said it had noticed a "partial recovery" in some regions, but its actions were failing to result in a "sustained recovery".

The company later added that it is "engaged in multiple workstreams to alleviate impact".

At 3.13am, the US-based company, worth in excess of £2.9 trillion — making it the third most valuable company worldwide, said the changes it had made to "improve serviceability" were not "taking as expected".

A patch rolled out just before 8am also failed to work.