English
A widespread Microsoft Outlook outage disrupted email access for tens of thousands of users across 74 countries and territories on Thursday. The failure also affected other Microsoft 365 services, including Teams and the AI assistant Copilot, stretching across much of the US workday and into the evening.
Outage Spreads Rapidly Across the Globe
The disruption spread globally within about an hour of first appearing. Outage tracking platform Downdetector mapped the impact across the Americas, parts of Europe, Asia and Africa. Microsoft initially said it was investigating reports of issues “in the Americas.” However, the company later confirmed the problem affected “Microsoft 365 service connectivity for users in any region.”
Stay connected to every major update — subscribe and follow us on the PhoenixQ website and across our social media platforms.
Microsoft 365 is the company’s cloud-based subscription service. It includes widely used tools such as Outlook, Teams and Copilot. Microsoft attributed the outage to “elevated load” on its infrastructure across multiple regions.
Microsoft Acts to Restore Service
The company moved quickly to address the problem. “We’ve paused all deployments, we’re moving additional traffic off the affected infrastructure, and we’re restarting affected servers to return them to service,” Microsoft posted on X. The company also said it was “aggressively pursuing all pathways to reduce impact.”
In the United States, around 130,000 users reported Outlook issues shortly after 1 pm Eastern Time, according to Downdetector. By 6 pm Eastern Time, that number had fallen to approximately 37,000. Meanwhile, thousands of additional users also reported problems with Teams and Copilot throughout the day.
Gradual Recovery Under Way
As the outage continued into the evening, Microsoft posted a series of updates on X. Shortly after 6 pm Eastern Time, the company said it observed “limited recovery” as it worked to redirect user traffic away from affected servers. “As capacity is restored, users may experience a gradual recovery as their clients reconnect,” Microsoft added. Despite these efforts, full service restoration remained incomplete for several hours after the outage began.
