Email bouncebacks and recurring errors in corporate Microsoft apps forced Madison Smith and her colleagues in Vancouver to take an early lunch.
But as the outage continued post-lunch on Thursday, the mechanical engineer-in-training says she had to start texting her clients and taking the day a bit slower.
Meanwhile, she says the office was vibrant with chatter and some of her colleagues switched to long-overdue tasks, such as cleaning their desks.
Millions of Microsoft users worldwide were sharing similar tales online Thursday and early Friday as the outage of the popular workplace software brought offices to a standstill.
The outage, which is now broadly restored, affected a range of Microsoft 365 services, including Outlook, Teams and AI assistant Copilot.
Charles Lamanna, an executive vice-president at Microsoft, says the company is reviewing what happened and how it can prevent similar issues going forward.
In a post on X, Microsoft says the disruption was caused by a network capacity upgrade and was not related to cyber or AI agents.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 13, 2026.
Ritika Dubey, The Canadian Press
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