130,000 Users Report Outlook Outage

Nearly 130,000 users reported problems accessing Outlook on the Downdetector platform just after 1 p.m. ET on Thursday. Although the number of new reports has since declined from that peak, many individuals said they could not send or receive emails. Others reported difficulty loading their inboxes entirely.

Thousands of additional users logged issues with Microsoft Teams, the company’s workplace messaging app. Complaints also extended to the AI assistant Copilot and broader Microsoft 365 services. Microsoft confirmed it was investigating disruptions specifically related to its email and Teams applications.

In social media updates, the Redmond, Washington-based company stated it was aware of users experiencing issues accessing Exchange Online mailboxes through multiple connection methods in the Americas. The firm explained that a portion of its infrastructure was experiencing elevated load, which it said was likely contributing to the connectivity errors.

Microsoft determined that a number of servers were unexpectedly unavailable due to a problem that caused them to fail during automated health checks. While the exact cause of that failure remained unclear, the company said it was testing a fix. It is rolling out an alternative method for these checks to bring impacted servers back online.

The Microsoft 365 Status account on X wrote, “We’re aggressively pursuing all pathways to reduce impact.” Earlier in the day, the company said it had successfully restored problems related to Microsoft Teams in North America. However, some users continued to report connectivity issues as of Thursday afternoon.

The outage affected users across the Americas, with the highest concentration of reports occurring in the afternoon. Microsoft’s response focused on restoring server availability through modified health check procedures. The company’s status page continued to reflect ongoing work to stabilize the affected services.