Microsoft is currently addressing a significant global outage impacting its Outlook email service and other products such as Teams and Copilot. The company attributed the disruption to “elevated load” on its infrastructure.
On Thursday, Microsoft indicated that its repair efforts were not progressing as anticipated, prompting the company to explore alternative solutions to restore services. Users across various sectors, including businesses and government agencies, reported being unable to communicate through Outlook.
Microsoft stated via X, “We’ve monitored the status of the changes applied to improve serviceability and confirmed they’re not taking as expected.” They added that they are identifying different workstreams to enhance capacity, yet did not provide a timeline for when services would be fully restored.
The interruption rapidly expanded, affecting services in 74 countries and territories. Outage tracker Downdetector reported a noticeable increase in outage reports, indicating a widespread issue that spanned the Americas and parts of Europe, Asia, and Africa. For instance, the foreign ministry in New Zealand noted that the global outage hindered its ability to receive emails, impacting its embassies and consulates worldwide.
Initially, Microsoft limited its investigation to the Americas, but it later confirmed that the outage affected Microsoft 365 service connectivity for users in all regions. This cloud-based subscription service incorporates essential applications such as Outlook and Teams.
In ongoing updates from Microsoft, the company revealed that part of its infrastructure was experiencing high demand across multiple geographical areas, contributing to connectivity problems. Downdetector also reported that many users were facing difficulties with Teams and Copilot.
As the outage continued for several hours, Microsoft reiterated its commitment to resolving the issues, with updates highlighting attempts to reroute user traffic away from the affected servers. In an update shortly before 6 PM Eastern Time, the company mentioned observing limited recovery and indicated that users might experience a gradual return to normal service as capacity improved.
