The outage also affected other technology companies, including AI firms.
A Microsoft outage disrupted Outlook, Teams, Copilot and other Microsoft 365 services. Picture: iStock
Thousands of users across multiple countries have been left unable to access emails, workplace messaging platforms and essential business applications after a widespread Microsoft outage disrupted Outlook, Teams, Copilot and other Microsoft 365 services.
The disruption, reported on Thursday, affected several Microsoft services, including Exchange Online, Microsoft Teams, SharePoint Online, Microsoft 365 Copilot and Microsoft Defender XDR.
Global outage
Reports of problems with Outlook, Microsoft’s email service, climbed to about 130,000 on outage-tracking website Downdetector shortly after 1pm Eastern Time (18:00 GMT).
Some users reported being unable to send or receive emails, while others said they could not access their inboxes.
According to Downdetector, the disruption affected Microsoft services in 74 countries and territories.
The outage also reportedly affected other technology companies, including AI firms Anthropic and OpenAI, which rely on Microsoft’s infrastructure for some of their services.
Services affected
Users also reported difficulties accessing Microsoft’s workplace messaging platform Teams and its AI assistant Copilot, alongside other Microsoft 365 services.
Microsoft said the disruption could affect users in any region.
In an update posted on X, the company said some servers were unavailable and failing automatic health checks, placing additional pressure on infrastructure that remained operational.
Microsoft said it was testing a configuration change to redistribute elevated traffic across parts of its infrastructure. It was also restarting affected services to restore availability.
“We’re working to safely return them to service,” the company said.
Recovery efforts
In its latest update, Microsoft reported “positive results” from efforts to restart affected infrastructure and restore server availability in an isolated manner.
The company said it was monitoring infrastructure performance to verify stability before expanding recovery measures more broadly.
The outage comes after Microsoft experienced another major disruption last month involving its Azure cloud platform, which affected its productivity services and businesses around the world.
