A major Microsoft outage continues to disrupt email and business services around the world, with the technology giant admitting its latest attempt to restore normal operations has not worked as expected.

The disruption has affected Microsoft 365 services, including Outlook, Teams, SharePoint and Copilot, leaving users unable to access emails, manage calendars and use some workplace applications.

In its latest update on Friday afternoon, Microsoft confirmed changes intended to improve the reliability of its systems had failed.

“We’ve monitored the status of the changes applied to improve serviceability and confirmed they’re not taking as expected.”

The company said engineers were now investigating alternative ways to increase capacity as problems with the distribution of internet traffic continued to overwhelm parts of its infrastructure.

Earlier, Microsoft identified a technical problem affecting processes responsible for establishing secure connections to its servers.

Those processes were becoming overwhelmed, causing servers to stop responding and placing additional pressure on the remaining infrastructure.

Engineers have attempted several fixes, including restarting affected servers, redirecting traffic and limiting certain connections.

Some of those efforts initially showed signs of improvement, but affected servers subsequently became unresponsive again.

The outage has had consequences beyond email.

Microsoft confirmed users could experience delays receiving messages, difficulties scheduling meetings through Teams, problems accessing Copilot and failures involving Microsoft Planner, To Do and other services.

However, core Teams messaging and video meetings have largely remained functional.

The disruption has also affected organisations in New Zealand.

The company has not confirmed when all services will be restored.