Microsoft outage disrupts Outlook, Teams, and Microsoft 365 globally for over five hours

A Microsoft outage on Thursday disrupted Outlook email, Teams, and other Microsoft 365 services globally for over five hours, with the company reporting partial recovery and ongoing efforts to stabilize its infrastructure. The issue was concentrated in Exchange Online, which manages Microsoft 365 mailboxes, and also impacted AI platforms from OpenAI and Anthropic. Downdetector recorded a peak of 138,058 Outlook problem reports, though the number later declined to around 34,490. Microsoft stated that several servers unexpectedly went offline, overloading the remaining infrastructure, and that initial mitigation measures did not provide the expected relief. The company is implementing automated recovery systems to restart unresponsive servers, with affected users potentially numbering in the millions worldwide.