Major Worldwide Microsoft Outage Disrupts Outlook, Teams and Copilot
A major outage has hit several Microsoft services worldwide, leaving thousands of users in difficulty.
Because of the outage, users are having connection problems with Microsoft Teams, Outlook and the company's artificial intelligence software Copilot, among other services.
Microsoft said some of its technical infrastructure in multiple regions of the world is under more pressure than normal, which is likely causing the connection problems. That generally means its servers are overloaded, disrupting its ability to run services normally.
In a post on social media platform X, the company said it is working hard to use every possible means to reduce the impact of the outage.
Users have been reported to be having trouble connecting to several Microsoft 365 apps. In particular, Microsoft's Exchange Online service, which includes the Outlook email app, has been disrupted for many customers.
Microsoft said users may also have trouble viewing certain files or information in their calendar app. The company's AI platform Copilot has also been disrupted.
However, Microsoft said messaging and online meeting services remain largely working, and work is under way quickly to resolve the problem.
In its latest update on X, Microsoft said its team is seeing positive results in efforts to restart the affected systems, and the systems are now being monitored closely.
Thousands of users in countries including the United States, Japan, Singapore, the United Kingdom and Australia have been reported to be having trouble using Microsoft services. The outage has lasted at least eight hours, and the first problem was identified on Thursday shortly after 4:15 p.m. GMT.
According to outage-tracking website Downdetector, complaints about Outlook use worldwide peaked on Thursday around 6 p.m. GMT, at about 140,000 complaints, more than 2,000 times the normal level.
Downdetector also said the Microsoft outage spread to 74 countries within about an hour. According to the website's latest information, more than 28,000 users are currently still affected by the outage.
