Microsoft is facing difficulty restoring a broad service disruption that has affected Outlook and several other platforms, acknowledging that recovery efforts were “not taking as expected.”
Roughly 130,000 users in the United States reported problems with Outlook shortly after 1 p.m. Eastern time on Thursday, according to Downdetector.
Although the number of new complaints has declined, tens of thousands of users around the world were still unable to access their inboxes or send messages.
Microsoft’s subscription-based services are used by more than 430 million people, but the company has not said how many customers were directly affected.
Reports of disruptions also emerged for Teams, Microsoft’s workplace communications platform, along with its Copilot AI assistant and other Microsoft 365 products.
In a Thursday night update, Microsoft said it was exploring “alternate workstreams” to expand capacity while addressing ongoing imbalances in traffic management.
Earlier, the technology company said infrastructure under “elevated load across multiple regions” was probably contributing to the connectivity problems.
The incident occurred only days after Outlook customers were advised to install a software update following the discovery that hackers were exploiting a security vulnerability capable of exposing information used to confirm users’ identities.
Microsoft said Thursday night that efforts to restore services following a widespread outage were “not taking as expected”
Users around the world struggled to access Outlook and other Microsoft services for much of the day
Microsoft said it expected to provide another update at approximately 11:30 p.m. Eastern time on Thursday.
The company had previously reported that several servers became “unexpectedly unavailable” after failing during automated health checks.
Microsoft did not immediately explain what caused those checks to fail.
It later said engineers were testing a solution and deploying another process to return the affected servers to service.
“We’re aggressively pursuing all pathways to reduce impact,” Microsoft’s 365 Status account said on X.
At around noon, Microsoft said that “mitigative actions” had successfully restored service health and functionality in North America.
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However, users continued to report problems, disputing the company’s claim as the outage disrupted the middle of the working day for many customers.
Australian Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke said Microsoft had told him it did not believe the disruption was the result of a cyberattack, according to Reuters.
Microsoft said infrastructure facing “elevated load across multiple regions” could be contributing to the extensive outage
OpenAI said the Microsoft disruption left ChatGPT experiencing “degraded performance” on Thursday
The Microsoft outage also rippled across a number of other platforms.
OpenAI said Thursday afternoon that it was investigating problems with Microsoft connectors, warning that new connections could fail and tools might not work properly.
OpenAI also reported that ChatGPT was operating with “degraded performance.”
Anthropic, another leading artificial intelligence company, said its users were encountering difficulties linked to the Microsoft 365 incident.
According to Anthropic, mail, calendar and search features within its Microsoft 365 connector were failing for most requests.
The disruption also affected correctional facilities. The Arapahoe Sheriff’s Office in Colorado said Thursday evening on X that it could not receive email alerts required to process online bond payments.
People seeking immediate release on bond were therefore instructed to complete the process in person at the jail.
The New York City Department of Investigation said the outage had also led to the suspension of evictions scheduled for Friday.
Microsoft has said that Copilot, its AI assistant, is used by more than 90 percent of Fortune 500 companies.
Microsoft’s subscription services have more than 430 million users (Photo of the company’s campus in Redmond, Washington)
This is a developing story. More to come.
