A global outage of Microsoft Outlook and Teams was easing on Friday after nearly 24 hours of chaos that crippled online communications, forcing some organizations to revert to fax and halting at least one European bond repurchase.

The widespread technical disruption crippled core cloud and productivity services—including Microsoft Outlook, Teams, and Microsoft 365—across more than 70 countries, from Australia and Japan to the United States.

The outage caused operational delays at trading firms, hindered companies from releasing earnings reports, and forced offices to temporarily rely on phone calls and alternative messaging platforms. Microsoft apologized for the disruption, clarifying that the failure was caused by technical infrastructure strain and was not linked to a cyberattack as engineering teams worked to restore normal access.