Outlook outage: Microsoft reports 'issues' with Teams and email

A widespread Microsoft outage has impacted companies, governments, and millions of users worldwide, leaving organizations unable to access email, attend Teams meetings, use cloud PCs, or consult Copilot. According to The Register, the disruption began on Thursday at around 18:00 UTC and damaged Exchange Online along with another 15 hosted services that rely on it. Services that do not need Exchange Online remained functional. AP News reported that the outage hit companies and governments worldwide as Microsoft struggled to restore services. Forbes noted that the Microsoft 365 outage extended into Friday, with governments and airlines reporting disruptions. Bloomberg.com reported that the glitch gummed up markets and forced traders to use phones. In Australia, the incident was being called the "Microsoft long weekend," rendering Friday a write-off at organizations relying on Redmond's online services. NBC News described Microsoft as scrambling to fix the major outage affecting millions across the world. The Guardian reported that Microsoft was 'restarting' as the outage impacted global users, and later noted that 'positive results for server stability' were reported amid the global disruption. The software giant initially blamed the outage on a mysterious problem causing servers to fail automated health checks and become unavailable. Microsoft thought it found a fix, but quickly admitted that actions taken thus far had not provided the anticipated relief. As the situation continued without marked improvement, The Register noted that Microsoft adjusted its language regarding the possibility of a cyberattack. An update time-stamped 04:11 UTC stated the company could find no indication this was the result of malicious activity, and a subsequent update at 05:46 UTC stated the company was not aware of any malicious activity causing the incident. Microsoft's RSS feed documented various measures attempted by the software giant, including applying infrastructure capacity improvements, reviewing traffic flows to optimize routing, and identifying alternate workstreams to increase capacity. The company reported observing partial recovery across regions where adjustments were applied, but noted those actions did not result in sustained recovery. Further actions included scaling up virtual machines to increase capacity and reduce load, though Microsoft encountered issues with machines getting stuck in a bad state that prevented changes from syncing as expected. In its latest status update, Microsoft stated it was continuing to pursue multiple workstreams to pinpoint the underlying cause of the traffic influx and advance the recoverability of backend servers. The company emphasized that it was taking a measured approach to identify and repair affected infrastructure, and tracking results to verify that servers showed anticipated recovery and performance.