For hours nobody could use their email, and their reaction was… joyous

Detailed summary

According to its status pages, a “core process” that runs Microsoft 365, its software suite that runs email, collaboration, word processing and spreadsheets for workers across the…

Naturally, the abrupt absence of something that has become a vital part of the way our planet works and communicates caused an almost instant outburst of… happiness. And humour. Even relief.

Microsoft, the software behemoth behind much of the productivity software that runs the modern world, had a big problem.

According to its status pages, a “core process” that runs Microsoft 365, its software suite that runs email, collaboration, word processing and spreadsheets for workers across the world, was “becoming overwhelmed, which causes the servers to stop responding”. Seven hours later, it remained broken.

More than 450 million people in four million businesses use Microsoft 365, including its Outlook email software. Families, students, government agencies, schools and corporations rely on it.

Though the outage came after work hours in the UK, it was still felt here – as well as in the US, and in Australia and Asia when the problem persisted for hours into Friday morning.

“Learning from the Great Outlook Outage how much of my job is just sitting and replying to emails,” wrote one US worker.

Some even used it as a marketing opportunity. “Need something to do while Outlook is down? You can always come to the library,” wrote Des Moines Public Library.

There was a serious side to the outage: the Washington State Department of Health asked people to contact them by phone if they had urgent issues and weren’t receiving replies by email.

But a very common theme was that life without email was an unexpected joy.

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