A Microsoft 365 outage disrupted access to Outlook, Teams and Copilot on Thursday, with users reporting problems across 74 countries and territories. Microsoft said it was working to restore services, but an attempted fix had not worked as expected by early Friday.
The company initially reported access problems with Exchange Online mailboxes in the Americas. It said part of its infrastructure was experiencing elevated load that was likely contributing to connection errors, and that it was pursuing ways to reduce the impact, according to DW.
Users reported being unable to send or receive email, while others said Outlook was inaccessible. Teams and Microsoft’s Copilot assistant were also affected. Downdetector recorded nearly 130,000 US reports of Outlook problems shortly after 1 p.m. Eastern time on Thursday. Those reports reflect user submissions, not a confirmed count of affected customers.
Recovery efforts continue
Microsoft said some servers that had been restarted stopped responding again after traffic returned. In an update at 02:54 GMT on Friday, the company said its latest changes had not produced the expected results and that it was exploring other options to restore service.
The disruption also affected Microsoft 365 connectors used by OpenAI and Anthropic. Both companies said their tools were not working as expected, Reuters reported.
Nicole French 
Reid Bentley