Hospitals, GPs and police forces across the UK have been hit by the global Microsoft outage, which is also expected to disrupt schools, businesses and some travel.

Key public services battled to get systems back online amid "widespread" and "serious" disruption to NHS services, as staff resorted to using patient's paper records after being unable to access email and other IT facilities used to deliver healthcare.

Downing Street said it was seeking to establish the "full picture" of Microsoft outages and urged the public to follow advice on "alternative ways to get in touch" where services were disrupted.

The disruption sent some sectors back to the 1990s amid reports of court staff looking for fax machines and rail travellers being warned they may not be able to rely on digital tickets.

Patients getting their prescriptions were also cautioned about possible delays, schools and universities were unable to access emails, and there were reports that ambulance services had been affected by the outage.

The problems began late on Thursday afternoon and users have been unable to access many of Microsoft's most popular services. Thousands worldwide reported they were unable to send and receive emails through Outlook.

The Microsoft executive vice-president Charles Lamanna said the outages did not appear to be the result of a cyber-attack. On Friday morning, the firm said it was seeing "early signs of stabilisation", later issuing an update that it was seeing email traffic being gradually restored.

NHS staff arriving at work on Friday morning reported being unable to access email, affecting their ability to deliver healthcare in hospitals and surgeries, amid warnings that the outage would be highly disruptive through the day.

In some cases, staff said they were able to use their phones to access Microsoft Teams, which is heavily relied upon in the healthcare sector, but meetings were having to be cancelled across the board.

An NHS England spokesperson said: "Local NHS services are enacting longstanding measures to manage IT outages and ensure critical services and appointments can continue for patients today – including using other IT systems or paper records where possible."

Rachel Harrison, the GMB national secretary, said: "The Microsoft data outage is having a serious impact across ambulance and NHS trusts. Luckily emergency and life-threatening callouts appear to be unaffected."

Pharmacists warned there would be delays in the issuing of some prescriptions as a result of the incident, which disrupted the ability of some pharmacies to communicate with GP practices and patients.

While there was no early sign of widespread travel disruption, National Rail warned that people may not be able to access tickets that have been emailed to them. "If you're unable to locate or access your tickets through your email due to this issue, you may still be able to access your tickets by visiting the website or app where you purchased your tickets from and logging into your account," it said, recommending that passengers do so before travel.

The already backlogged court system was hit with juries in some cases being sent home early, or prisoners not being sent to court. At Minshull Street crown court in Manchester, Judge Maurice Greene said staff had been looking for a fax machine earlier in the morning.

"I would say sorry but it's not my fault. It's Mr [Bill] Gates's fault," he told jurors before sending them home, referring to the cofounder of Microsoft, who officially resigned from Microsoft's board of directors six years ago.

Businesses, meanwhile, were braced for the impact of economic damage while the UK's top financial regulators, the Bank of England and Financial Conduct Authority, were hit by the Outlook outage, although a spokesperson for the bank said "all critical operations" were running normally.

However, the turmoil comes on the busiest day of the week for mortgage completions and there were also warnings that digital tickets for events could be affected, with Cheltenham racecourse urging visitors to arrive early.

Engineers from the government were working with Microsoft to assess the impact of the outage, according to a minister, while the Welsh government said it was putting contingency plans in place.

A Downing Street spokesperson said the prime minister was being kept updated on the situation, while individual departments would be able to rely on contingency plans where necessary.

They declined to say whether Downing Street itself had been affected, adding: "There are contingency measures in place at No 10, as there are with all government departments, to ensure that work can go on as usual."

Asked about the effect specifically on the NHS, they said it appeared all clinical and operation systems were working effectively.

However, Britain's minister for defence readiness and industry, Luke Pollard, said earlier in the morning that the Microsoft outage demonstrated the need for "greater resilience" against technology failures.

Pollard told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "My appetite for disruption when it comes to using my phone is virtually zero. I imagine that's the case for every one of your listeners, that people want it to work all the time, every time, and we're seeing more disruption from those tech companies. That's partly because we've become more dependent on technology."

Police forces across the country, including Britain's largest, the Metropolitan police, said the outage was having an impact on the ability to report crimes using official websites. Access to Microsoft products used by MPs was also down.

A parliamentary spokesperson said: "We are aware of the global issue affecting Microsoft email services, which is impacting users of the parliamentary network. We are working with Microsoft to resolve the matter as quickly as possible."

School inspections in England were disrupted after Ofsted said it was unable to receive emails, as hundreds of schools, colleges and universities across the UK were affected.

The higher education sector was braced to be the hardest hit, with many UK universities relying on Outlook, OneDrive and other Microsoft services for administration and communications, although Teams appears to be functioning for some online meetings.