Microsoft outage disrupts Outlook and Teams for users worldwide

Microsoft Outlook suffered a major global outage on Friday, affecting tens of thousands of users unable to access email, with Microsoft working "aggressively" to reduce impact across Microsoft 365 services including Teams. Nearly 130,000 users reported Outlook issues by 1 pm ET, declining to about 60,000 by 3 pm ET. Microsoft cited elevated infrastructure load across multiple regions, pausing deployments and restarting servers. Teams, Exchange Online, SharePoint, Copilot 365, and Defender XDR were also impacted. The outage disrupted work globally, including New Zealand courts and banks, with experts estimating billions in economic impact. Some called for greater government IT strategy diversification, noting reliance on dominant suppliers like Microsoft increases vulnerability to such failures.