Microsoft outage disrupts Outlook, Teams and Copilot worldwide

Microsoft said it was working to restore access to its workplace software after customers reported problems connecting to email and other services. The outage affected Microsoft 365 services including Outlook, Teams and Copilot.

Scope of the outage

Outage tracker Downdetector received reports from 74 countries and territories within about an hour. In the United States, Downdetector logged nearly 130,000 reports of Outlook problems shortly after 1 p.m. EST. Thousands of users also reported issues with Teams and Copilot.

Microsoft initially said it was investigating reports of users experiencing issues accessing Exchange Online mailboxes through multiple connection methods in the Americas. The company later confirmed that users "in any region" could be affected.

Microsoft's response

Microsoft said it was rerouting connection traffic across its global infrastructure and restarting affected servers. The company also said it was adding capacity to handle increased traffic as more regions came back online.

Around 7:05 p.m. ET, Microsoft said some servers were becoming unresponsive again as traffic returned, underscoring that the company had not yet fully stabilized the outage.

Microsoft said some restarted servers stopped responding again once traffic returned. In an update at 0254 GMT Friday, the company said its latest changes had not worked as expected and that it was looking for other ways to restore service.

Other companies affected

The outage also impacted Microsoft 365 connectors used by the companies OpenAI and Anthropic, which said tools were not working as expected.

Amazon Web Services said it was "operating normally" and noted inaccurate reports of outages on its platforms. Google users reported issues on DownDetector.

Why it matters

The outage disrupted email, videoconferencing and AI assistant services for tens of thousands of users worldwide during the U.S. workday, highlighting reliance on cloud-based productivity software.

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Sources

• finance.yahoo.com: Microsoft outage disrupts Outlook, Teams, and Copilot for users 'in any region'
• dw.com: Microsoft outage hits Outlook and Teams worldwide
• theguardian.com: Microsoft struggles to fix huge outage affecting Outlook and Teams | Microsoft | The Guardian
• mashable.com: Microsoft outage: Microsoft 365, Teams, Outlook, Copilot all impacted | Mashable
• france24.com: Major Microsoft Outlook outage disrupts services in 74 countries - France 24
• cnbc.com: Widespread Microsoft outage takes down Outlook and other 365 services

This article was drafted with AI assistance and checked against the sources above. Company claims are reported as claims. Cover image is AI-generated.