Microsoft outage disrupts Montreal hospitals, universities and global services

MONTREAL · A major Microsoft outage is disrupting services at Montreal hospitals and universities as the global technical problem enters its second day. The Centre hospitalier de l'Université de Montréal warned that processing appointment requests could take longer and some hospital services may be slowed. The Jewish General Hospital said its Outlook and Copilot services were affected, which may delay appointment confirmations and block incoming emails. Microsoft reported it was making headway in restoring its workplace software after the widespread failure left businesses and institutions worldwide without email and other critical platforms.

The company said it was seeing encouraging recovery progress as service availability improved across a growing portion of its infrastructure. Microsoft noted broader improvements in North America and sustained gains in Europe, but warned users might still face intermittent access or delayed email delivery. Technical issues were first reported by the company just before 1 p.m. Eastern time on Thursday. There is no indication the outage resulted from malicious activity, according to Microsoft.

Local health authorities are monitoring the situation as services slowly return. The Santé Québec agency overseeing the Jewish General Hospital said its Microsoft service was gradually coming back online. The CHUM advised patients needing to cancel appointments to call a dedicated phone number. McGill University told students the outage could affect access to Microsoft tools, but later confirmed app access was restored and all classes would proceed. Concordia University reported email problems that appeared resolved by Friday morning.

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Travelers were also affected, with Via Rail warning passengers might not receive trip confirmation emails and suggesting they use a train tracker instead. The outage impacted a wide range of Microsoft 365 services including Outlook, Teams and the Copilot AI assistant. Early efforts to fix the problem did not work as expected. "Our actions taken thus far have not provided the anticipated relief," the company stated in a social media post.

The disruption had international consequences, halting a court trial in Britain and preventing police there from receiving online crime reports. Britain's National Pharmacy Association said people could face prescription delays due to National Health Service email problems. Norway's government reported several ministries were affected with no clear resolution time. Australian Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke said Microsoft compared the situation to the 2024 CrowdStrike outage caused by a faulty update.

Reports of problems on outage tracker Downdetector peaked at about 130,000 shortly after the disruption began Thursday afternoon. The incident affected not only communication tools but also administrative and security services like Microsoft Intune, Defender and Purview. This meant IT administrators could not reliably access the systems they use to manage devices or monitor security during the outage. Microsoft's latest update said email queues were significantly reduced and approaching normal levels.

With files from CBC News, CityNews and CIO Africa