Microsoft outage disrupts Outlook, Teams and Copilot worldwide

Microsoft users in multiple regions reported trouble accessing Outlook, Teams and Copilot on Thursday as the company worked to restore servers that had unexpectedly gone offline.

The disruption affected email and workplace tools. Some Outlook users said messages were not being sent or received, while others could not open their inboxes, Al Jazeera reported. Users also reported problems with Teams, Microsoft’s workplace messaging app, and its AI assistant Copilot. Other Microsoft 365 services were affected, according to Al Jazeera.

Reports of Outlook problems on the outage-tracking site Downdetector climbed to about 130,000 shortly after 18:00 GMT, Al Jazeera reported. The BBC said the site showed more than 131,000 reports of Outlook problems in the United States at 18:15 GMT. Downdetector also showed a spike in reports from UK users concerning Microsoft products at around 18:30 GMT, the BBC reported.

The problem was initially reported in the United States, but Microsoft said it could affect users “in any region.” The company said part of its infrastructure was under “elevated load,” contributing to connectivity errors.

“We determined the elevated load isn’t driven by an increase in traffic, but by a number of servers being unexpectedly unavailable; straining the remaining infrastructure,” Microsoft said in a statement quoted by the BBC. The company said servers were failing automated health checks, leaving fewer machines available to handle demand.

In an update at 19:50 GMT, Microsoft said it was “testing a configuration” to address the problem causing servers to fail those checks and become unavailable. It said all affected servers had been restarted, according to the BBC. Al Jazeera reported that Microsoft was testing a configuration change to redistribute traffic across its infrastructure and restarting affected services to bring them back online.

“We’re working to safely return them to service,” Microsoft said, according to Al Jazeera.

The number of Outlook problem reports on Downdetector had fallen to about 77,000 by just before 20:00 GMT, Al Jazeera reported. Microsoft did not say when it expected services to be fully restored.