Microsoft outage disrupts Outlook, Teams and other 365 services

Microsoft users across the country had trouble reaching their email on Thursday as an outage disrupted Outlook and other services in the company's Microsoft 365 suite, according to several news outlets.

The Associated Press, in a report carried by the Anchorage Daily News and WKOW, said close to 130,000 people had logged problems with Outlook on the outage-tracking site Downdetector shortly after 1 p.m. Eastern time. Those reports later declined somewhat, the AP said. Users described being unable to send or receive messages, and some said their inboxes would not load at all.

The disruption was not limited to email. According to the AP, thousands of users also reported problems with Teams, the company's workplace chat app, with its Copilot AI assistant, and with Microsoft 365 more broadly. CBS Philadelphia described the Outlook outage as nationwide.

Microsoft, which is based in Redmond, Washington, posted updates on social media. The company said it was looking into reports that users in the Americas could not reach their Exchange Online mailboxes through several connection methods, the AP and ABC7 News Bay Area reported. ABC7 reported that Microsoft later said the problem could affect Microsoft 365 connectivity for users in any region.

Accounts of the cause shifted over the course of the day. The AP reported that Microsoft first pointed to part of its infrastructure handling an elevated load, which it said was likely behind the connection errors. The AP said the company planned to redistribute traffic to balance that load.

ABC7 reported a later update from Microsoft that changed this explanation. In that update, the company said the heavier load was not caused by more traffic. Instead, it said a number of servers had unexpectedly gone offline, leaving the remaining equipment to carry the extra work.

The Microsoft 365 Status account on X said the company was pursuing every available option to limit the impact, according to the AP and ABC7. ABC7 reported that Microsoft said it had paused all deployments, was moving traffic away from the affected systems, and was restarting servers to bring them back online.

The Teams problems were reported separately. ABC7 and the AP said Microsoft had earlier flagged trouble with Teams in North America, then said its fixes had restored the service. The AP noted that some users still reported connection problems after that announcement.

The AP said Microsoft did not immediately offer more details. ABC7 described the situation as still developing.

Compiled by True News from reporting by CBS Philadelphia, Anchorage Daily News, WKOW and ABC7 News Bay Area. Each outlet's original story is linked below.

Originally published by True News: https://truenews.bagleyenterprises.net/stories/1008