A global Microsoft outage caused widespread disruption across Worcestershire, affecting councils, schools, hospitals and businesses.
Microsoft users continued to experience disruption on Friday after the system went down the previous evening although the issues are not believed to have been caused by a cyber attack.
Multiple organisations have been affected as the tech giant worked to resolve outages impacting some of its most popular services, including Microsoft 365, Outlook, Teams, SharePoint, OneDrive and Copilot.
The issues began around 6pm on Thursday evening and continued the following day. By Friday afternoon, the Microsoft 365 services were still recovering, particularly across Europe.
However, by the afternoon, Microsoft had not yet declared the outage fully resolved although there had been reported improvements.
Worcestershire County Council shared information on their website that they were unable to receive or send emails until the issue has been resolved.
A council spokesperson said: “Adults and Children’s Liquid Logic Portals are impacted by the current global Microsoft outage due to emails not being received to authenticate log in.”
The Microsoft outage is stopping 111 and 999 from referring patient details as they usually would, GMB Union claimed.
The issue is creating a “massive backlog” though emergency callouts “appear to be unaffected”.
Rachel Harrison, GMB national secretary, said: “The Microsoft data outage is having a serious impact across ambulance and NHS trusts.
“Those who work in 111 and 999 services are unable to refer patient details in the normal way which is creating a massive backlog and has the potential for chaos.”
“Luckily emergency and life threatening call outs appear to be unaffected.”
Kings Hawford warned parents that, due to the service issue, “emails sent to the school since yesterday may not reach us or may be delayed”.
The advice to parents was to call the school office by telephone instead.
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A spokesperson for Droitwich Spa High School said: “We’re aware of the ongoing Microsoft 365 outage, which has affected some of our school systems.
“Our staff have been working hard behind the scenes to put alternative arrangements in place and ensure that the school day can continue as smoothly and uninterrupted as possible”
Microsoft executive vice-president Charles Lamanna said the outages did not appear to be the result of a cyber attack.
“We regret that today’s outages caused disruptions for our customers, and we are working to address the issue,” he wrote on X.
“We will continue to share more information as soon as we have it, and for now I can confirm that there is no indication this is the result of malicious or cyber activity.”