• Analysis
Microsoft Outlook Outage Hits Users Across 74 Countries
A worldwide Microsoft Outlook outage on a Thursday disrupted Outlook, Teams and Copilot for tens of thousands of users across 74 countries and territories, with Microsoft blaming elevated load on its infrastructure and reporting only limited recovery hours later.
Global reach of the outage
Microsoft services including Outlook, Teams and the AI assistant Copilot went down for users worldwide on a Thursday, disrupting access for tens of thousands of people, according to outage tracker Downdetector.
Downdetector said the disruption went global within an hour, and a map the tracker posted on X showed the scope of the microsoft 365 outage:
- •The Americas
- •Parts of Europe
- •Parts of Asia
- •Parts of Africa
Thousands of users also reported issues with Teams and Copilot, according to Downdetector.
Microsoft's explanation
Microsoft initially said it was investigating outage reports in the Americas, then confirmed the issue apparently affected Microsoft 365 service connectivity for users in any region.
The company said on X that a portion of its infrastructure was experiencing elevated load across multiple regions, likely contributing to connectivity errors.
We've determined a portion of infrastructure is experiencing elevated load across multiple regions
Scale of user reports
Downdetector outage reports peaked at around 130,000 users in the United States who reported issues with Outlook shortly after 1 pm Eastern Time (1800 GMT). By 6 pm Eastern Time (2300 GMT), the count of users reporting Outlook issues had fallen to about 37,000.
Steps toward recovery
Microsoft said it had paused all deployments, was moving additional traffic off the affected infrastructure and restarting affected servers to return them to service.
In an update shortly after 6 pm Eastern Time, the company said it was observing limited recovery as it sought to route user traffic away from affected servers.
As capacity is restored, users may experience a gradual recovery as their clients reconnect
The outlook service disruption persisted for much of the US workday, with Microsoft reporting only limited recovery hours after the outage began.
