How the Microsoft outage is affecting Australians

Australians woke this morning up to a global outage affecting numerous Microsoft products used in hundreds of millions of workplaces around the world.

Throughout the day, the tech giant worked to fix the issue causing disruptions to Outlook, Teams and Authenticator and the many other programs businesses, institutions and services rely on.

While some enjoyed a reprieve from responding to emails at work, the outage has exposed how reliant Australians are on technology the country does not control.

Australian Catholic University's IT discipline head Niusha Shafiabady said the outage exposed how dangerous that was.

"When systems fail overseas, Australian businesses can feel the consequences almost immediately," she said.

"We are making our systems more intelligent in Australia, but not necessarily more resilient. Even the smartest systems are useless when the infrastructure they depend on fails."

Here's what people told the ABC about how they experienced the outage.

What happened?

A widespread outage hit Microsoft software, including Outlook, with many users having trouble accessing their email accounts and encountering other errors across the tech giant's suite of applications.

On Microsoft's Service Health Status site, the company confirmed users may be unable to connect to multiple 365 services, including Exchange Online, Microsoft Teams, SharePoint Online, Copilot 365, Defender, Planner, To Do, Intune, Purview and Power BI.

The company posted an update just after 9am AEST saying it had begun a "gradual recovery" of access to email and other online services.

An hour later, another update was posted saying restored servers were becoming unresponsive again.

Microsoft explained this was due to a process on the affected servers "responsible for establishing secure connections" becoming overwhelmed, causing the servers to stop processing requests.

Microsoft outage updates

The company said it was preparing a solution to "address this behaviour" and if successful it would then "gradually reintroduce additional traffic".

A further update said: "We've monitored the status of the changes applied to improve serviceability and confirmed they're not taking as expected."

There have since been reports of a gradual return but by Friday afternoon no "long-term fix" had been found by Microsoft.

Governments, businesses grind to a halt with Outlook down

Beyond the immediate impact to inboxes, businesses and government agencies reported cascading effects on day-to-day administration.

Stores lost email-based sales, patients have lost access to telehealth services and long-distance schools have shut for the day.

With Microsoft's two-factor authentication app Authenticator down, Peter Roche in Adelaide said he could not process invoices or access accounting software.

"[It's] very difficult to do work, losing thousands of dollars because we aren't getting the orders in and the invoices out. Bloody Microsoft."

Manny Flores in Melbourne had to miss a job interview.

"[I] couldn't access Teams for a job interview, it has been rescheduled for next week," he said.

"I suppose I should be grateful for the extra time to prepare, but after almost a year unemployed, getting to a final interview is huge, and the sooner I get an answer about my success or otherwise, the better."

Exams affected by Microsoft Outlook outage

The outage has affected students in the midst of their end-of-school exams.

Emilie Yu from Melbourne said she had been unable to study for her two remaining VCE language exams.

"Due to the Microsoft outage I now cannot access help and work from my teachers, on top of the VCAA website still being down for the past two days," she said.

"How are we expected to study like this? This isn't fair for hardworking students who are now losing resources."

Susan Wallace in Lismore said: "Lucky it's Friday because all of us using Teams for Virtual Classrooms at TAFE NSW and elsewhere, wouldn't be able to attend classes."

Medical care, vital scans inaccessible

Occupational therapist Lauren Van Ingen in Melbourne said she was unable to care for patients with neurological conditions due to being locked out of her Outlook account.

"This will affect my ability to work today, which includes helping clients with MND, Huntington's, and other conditions get the equipment they need to remain living safely at home.

"Fingers crossed it's up and running soon."

Maria Derosa is a patient in Melbourne who couldn't get medical scans done after a car accident.

"Medical scans have been cancelled due to both myself and the clinic not being able to access referrals via email or fax," she said.

"Doctors don't give paper referrals anymore so everything has been cancelled/delayed.

"I was in a car accident and I can't have the relevant tests to make sure I'm OK."

Flights grounded or delayed

Livinia Drummond from Sydney said her colleague's flight to Papua New Guinea was delayed as the captain's pre-flight documents were sent via email on Outlook.

"Passengers were advised to wait on the bus at the tarmac for someone on foot to bring printed documents," she said.

"Our reliance on these systems is terrifying."