Microsoft Outlook outage disrupts email for tens of thousands worldwide
Tens of thousands of users were unable to access their emails Thursday due to a major outage of Microsoft's Outlook service. The company said its remediation measures are not working "as expected." Microsoft initially investigated reports of outages in the Americas, then confirmed the issue could affect Microsoft 365 login for users in any region worldwide. Downdetector reported outages across 74 countries and territories, spanning the Americas, parts of Europe, Asia, and Africa. The outage also disrupted AI assistants like Copilot, Claude, and ChatGPT that rely on Microsoft accounts. Microsoft paused deployments and restarted affected servers, noting "limited recovery" by evening, while the University of Iowa hospital network directed patients to use its online portal.