Microsoft Struggles to Fix Global Outlook Outage Affecting Teams and Copilot in 74 Countries

Microsoft said on Thursday that its efforts to repair a major Outlook outage were not going as expected and that it was seeking alternative solutions, as users around the world were left without its crucial services.

The hours-long disruption, which Microsoft attributed to "elevated load" on its infrastructure, has hit email as well as other products such as Teams and the AI assistant Copilot. Users ranging from companies to governments reported being unable to communicate via Outlook.

"We've monitored the status of the changes applied to improve serviceability and confirmed they're not taking as expected," Microsoft said on X. It added that it was identifying alternate workstreams that could be applied to increase capacity, without saying when full service would be restored.

The disruption went global within an hour, knocking out Microsoft products in 74 countries and territories, according to the outage tracker Downdetector. A map it posted on X showed users affected across the Americas and parts of Europe, Asia and Africa. Thousands of users also reported problems with Teams and Copilot.

New Zealand was among the affected countries. Its foreign ministry sent a notice saying its ability to receive emails had been affected, which also impacted all New Zealand embassies, consulates and representative offices worldwide.

Microsoft initially said it was investigating outage reports "in the Americas," but later confirmed that the issue apparently affected Microsoft 365 service connectivity for users in any region. Microsoft 365 is its cloud-based subscription service that includes popular applications such as Outlook and Teams. The company said a portion of its infrastructure was experiencing elevated load across multiple regions, which was likely contributing to the connectivity errors, and that it was "aggressively pursuing all pathways to reduce impact."

Downdetector showed a sharp decline in disruption reports around 0450 GMT in Washington and Hong Kong. As the outage dragged on, Microsoft posted a series of updates on X detailing continued but unsuccessful efforts to restore full service. In one update shortly after 6 p.m. Eastern Time (2300 GMT), it said it was "observing limited recovery" as it tried to route user traffic away from affected servers. "As capacity is restored, users may experience a gradual recovery as their clients reconnect," the company added.