Brands, WHO and workers react as Microsoft 365 blackout runs into Friday

Disruption could be as high as 450 million, Microsoft’s touted figure

As Microsoft 365 went dark from Thursday into Friday the 13th, silencing Outlook email and Teams messaging, public reaction arrived on social media and in worker accounts: brands posted outage-themed messages, the World Health Organization offered healthy offline alternatives, and office workers described the ways they were communicating without email.

The disruption affected an unknown number of users, though the total could be as high as 450 million — the figure Microsoft touts as the number of paid customers of the Microsoft 365 apps. Microsoft 365 outage messages and memes spread across the internet as thousands of users posted about the disruption.

Air India posted on X early Friday: “Emails can wait. The world has been waiting long enough,” the airline wrote. “Consider this your cue to plan that getaway.” The post featured a photo with a view out an airplane window and the quip, “A change of outlook we’d highly recommend.” The UK arm of discount grocery chain Aldi wrote on Facebook, “Microsoft being down is the equivalent of an adult snow day right?!” Burger King posted a message directed at Microsoft: “whoever’s troubleshooting and working on the outage rn…take your time. go out and get a Whopper.”

The World Health Organization suggested healthy offline alternatives such as taking a break from screens, stretching and walking.

Teams continued to work for some users, while others switched to other ways of communicating. “Having meetings on WhatsApp now instead,” one Redditor wrote. “My boss pointed out the program that has our training on still works,” someone else posted. Others turned to other screens for entertainment: “Feet up on the sofa, coffee in hand and playing a bit of xbox, wonderful start to the day,” another said. “Hopefully outlook is down for the remainder of the day.”

For one Redditor, the interruption turned the office into a social event. “It’s actually been quite fun in the office,” the Redditor wrote. “It feels like a bit of a social event — everyone is chatting, we’ve ordered breakfast in, planning a pub visit this afternoon if it continues. Is this what the 90s felt like?”

Even where notifications paused for a few hours, many users remained ready to reply-all at a moment’s notice.

The Associated Press uses several Microsoft 365 services, including Outlook, Teams, SharePoint and OneDrive. The outage gave AP reporter Stefanie Dazio, writing from Berlin, some peace and quiet to write the report. AP journalist Chan Ho-him in Hong Kong contributed to the report.