Your Friday inbox may not be the problem. Microsoft is still working to restore Outlook access after a widespread outage.

South Africans starting work on Friday may face email disruption as Microsoft continues to deal with an outage affecting Outlook and other Microsoft 365 services.

Microsoft’s public service-health page still showed service degradation on Friday morning. Its latest update, published at 08:57 SAST, said Microsoft was monitoring server performance after infrastructure reboots, checking that patches were working as intended and expanding capacity through virtual machines. It reported only marginal success and had not provided a time for full restoration.

The widespread disruption began on Thursday, according to the Associated Press. The problem remained unresolved in Microsoft’s Friday update.

What is affected?

Microsoft says some Exchange Online users may be unable to open their mailboxes through Outlook on the web, Outlook desktop or other connection methods. Email delivery may also be delayed.

The disruption extends to features in other Microsoft services that depend on Exchange Online and email. These include calendar functions in Teams, some administrative pages and parts of Copilot.

But Microsoft is not reporting that everything is offline. Its latest notice says most core Teams functions, including joining calls and meetings, group chats and channel messages, are not affected. Files stored directly in SharePoint Online remain accessible.

That distinction matters for businesses deciding how to keep working while email is unreliable.

What Microsoft is doing

Microsoft says it is monitoring server performance across regions after infrastructure reboots and checking that developed patches are working as intended. It has reported only marginal success and is also expanding capacity through virtual machines.

The company says it is not currently aware of malicious activity causing the incident. A full explanation of the root cause is expected after mitigation, so the outage should not be described as a confirmed cyberattack.

What this means for South African users

For an affected business, delayed email can mean a quotation, approval or meeting invitation does not arrive when expected. Those are potential practical consequences, not a measured estimate of losses.

SBL has not independently established how many South African users or businesses are affected. A global service incident does not establish that every local account is offline.

If a message is urgent, use an agreed alternative channel and confirm receipt. Do not assume that sending an email means the recipient has received it. For company accounts, follow your IT team’s guidance and check Microsoft’s official status page rather than unsolicited offers to repair your account.

The immediate position: the disruption is confirmed, recovery is still under way, and the scale of South African impact remains unverified.

Sources

The image is an original editorial illustration and does not reproduce a real Outlook interface.

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