Microsoft outage hits Outlook users in 74 countries

Microsoft Outlook suffered a major global outage Thursday, affecting tens of thousands of users across 74 countries and territories, with Microsoft working to reduce the impact. The disruption, attributed to "elevated load" on infrastructure, also hit Teams and Copilot, lasting much of the US workday. Downdetector reported around 130,000 US users flagged issues by 1 pm ET, declining to 37,000 by 6 pm ET. Microsoft paused deployments, restarted servers, and observed limited recovery, noting users may see gradual reconnection. The outage affected regions across the Americas, Europe, Asia, and Africa, impacting Microsoft 365 services.