Outage disrupts Microsoft Outlook, Teams services

Microsoft 365 experienced a service interruption on Thursday that affected email and messaging applications for millions of business users. The disruption primarily targeted Outlook and Teams, preventing many subscribers from sending or receiving messages.

Reports of the outage began accumulating just after 1 p.m. Eastern Time. By that hour, nearly 130,000 users had logged issues on the tracking site Downdetector. While the volume of new reports decreased shortly after the peak, complaints focused on inaccessible inboxes and failed connection attempts.

The problem extended beyond email to other parts of the Microsoft suite. Thousands of users cited difficulties with the Teams workplace messaging app and the Copilot AI assistant. These issues were part of a wider set of malfunctions reported across Microsoft 365 services.

Microsoft initially stated it was investigating disruptions related to its email and Teams applications. The Redmond, Washington, company later detailed that specific servers were unexpectedly unavailable. A technical fault caused these servers to fail during automated checks, creating elevated load on the remaining infrastructure and triggering connectivity errors.

The company identified the core issue as problems accessing Exchange Online mailboxes through multiple connection methods in the Americas. Microsoft officials confirmed they were testing a fix to resolve the server failures. The Microsoft 365 Status account posted on X that the team was aggressively pursuing all pathways to reduce user impact.

Earlier in the day, Microsoft announced it had successfully restored services for Microsoft Teams in North America. Despite that update, some users continued to report lingering connectivity issues as of the latest status updates.

The company has not yet released a definitive timeline for when all services will return to normal. It continues to monitor the situation as it applies its tested solution to the affected servers.