Microsoft Outlook outage disrupts email for tens of thousands worldwide

A major outage hit Microsoft's Outlook email service on Thursday, leaving tens of thousands of users unable to access their messages, with the company saying it was working "relentlessly" to resolve the issue. Microsoft initially investigated reports of outages "in the Americas," then confirmed the problem could affect Microsoft 365 logins for users in any region worldwide. Downdetector showed nearly 130,000 problem reports shortly after 18:00 GMT, with about 50,000 still affected three hours later. The outage also disrupted AI assistants like Copilot, Claude, and ChatGPT that rely on Microsoft accounts, and impacted public services, including the University of Iowa hospital network, which asked patients to use its online portal instead of email or voicemail.