Microsoft outage fades after hitting Dutch offices and councils

The latest: Microsoft said the outage is subsiding. Reports on the Allestoringen.nl outage-tracking site peaked around 09:00 on Friday and dropped sharply from about 12:30. Microsoft also said it sees "encouraging progress" in recovery, but it could not say when the problem will be fully fixed.

What happened:

• Problems began on Thursday afternoon around 17:15 Dutch time, hitting Outlook, Teams and the AI assistant Copilot.
• Microsoft first pointed to "increased load" on its infrastructure after some servers became unexpectedly unavailable.
• A Microsoft spokesperson later said the problem arose during a network capacity upgrade.
• Microsoft said it was not a cyberattack and had nothing to do with AI.
• According to Downdetector, which logged hundreds of thousands of complaints, users in more than 70 countries were affected.
• Microsoft apologised on Friday.

In the Netherlands:

• Courts could not send or receive email, but a spokesperson said they could be reached by phone.
• The municipalities of Leeuwarden and Barneveld reported email problems.
• The Dijklander Ziekenhuis, Ziekenhuis Amstelland and Noordwest Ziekenhuisgroep could not receive or answer email. The Dijklander asked patients with urgent questions to phone.
• Rabobank said customers were not affected, but colleagues could only partly stay in touch via Teams and OneDrive.
• NOS, RTL and many regional broadcasters mostly consulted by phone. NU.nl said it had no problems because it uses different IT infrastructure.
• Universities and associations were also affected. A UvA lecturer said she could not reach colleagues, so releasing grades that day would not work.

KNVB and De Toppers:

• The KNVB is deploying extra staff at the service desk for the Netherlands-Greece match, which starts at 20:45 on Friday. Some fans may be unable to open tickets sent to Microsoft email accounts.
• Verification codes for the KNVB Oranje app may also fail to arrive. The KNVB said fans already logged in can use their tickets. Ticket forwarding is temporarily switched off.
• The service desk at the stadium opens at 15:30 for fans who still have problems.
• De Toppers postponed the announcement of their new line-up to Monday. The organisation said the launch depends on the technical problems being fully resolved.

What experts said: Kor Gerritsma of IT consultancy Strict said companies are responsible for keeping work going and cannot assume Microsoft will solve everything. Jochem van Lierop of Conclusion Mission Critical said a cancelled meeting is annoying, but unprocessed orders or unhelped customers are a serious problem.

By the numbers: More than 430 million people use Microsoft 365 worldwide. NU.nl noted that not all of them were necessarily affected.