Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft 365 hit by major US outage

Thousands of Microsoft users in the US reported widespread outages on Thursday afternoon, with Outlook and Microsoft 365 experiencing major disruptions. Complaints surged on Downdetector, peaking at over 130,000 reports for Outlook at 1:15 p.m. Eastern time. Most Outlook issues involved the app, accounting for 36 percent of reports, while Microsoft 365 problems centered on Exchange, Teams, and CoPilot. Microsoft confirmed it is investigating connectivity issues affecting users in any region, citing service incident EX1550543. The outage began around 12:30 p.m. Eastern time, and while reports have started to decline, service restoration timing remains unclear. Outlook serves approximately 400 million users, including many businesses and government agencies.