Microsoft Faces Widespread Outage

A significant outage disrupted several Microsoft platforms, including Outlook, with users struggling to access email and encountering errors across the company’s applications. This incident occurred on Thursday, as reported by numerous users on the outage tracker website Downdetector.

At around 1 p.m. ET, approximately 130,000 users indicated issues with accessing Outlook. Although new reports have since decreased, many still experienced difficulties sending and receiving emails or even loading their inboxes. Additionally, numerous reports highlighted problems with Microsoft’s workplace communication tool, Teams, and its AI assistant, Copilot, along with broader Microsoft 365 services.

Microsoft acknowledged the disruptions, specifically affecting its email and Teams applications. The company posted updates on social media, indicating it was aware of users in the Americas having trouble accessing Exchange Online mailboxes through various connection methods. Microsoft attributed these difficulties to part of its infrastructure enduring an ‘elevated load,’ which likely contributed to the connectivity errors.

In response to the outage, Microsoft found that several servers were ‘unexpectedly unavailable.’ This unavailability was linked to a problem that caused them to fail during ‘automated health checks.’ The exact cause of this failure remained unclear at the time.

To address the issue, Microsoft announced it was testing a fix and deployed an alternate approach for these health checks. This plan aimed to bring the affected servers back online. The Microsoft 365 Status account tweeted on platform X about actively pursuing all possible methods to lessen the impact.

Earlier updates claimed that Microsoft had ‘successfully restored’ the issues relating to Microsoft Teams in North America. However, some users continued reporting connectivity challenges.