Microsoft Outlook outage persists globally after disrupting email access

A major outage of Microsoft's Outlook email service disrupted access for tens of thousands of users on Thursday, with the problem persisting into Friday. The disruption affected Microsoft 365 services globally. The outage, tracked by Downdetector, spread worldwide within an hour, impacting services in 74 countries and regions. Microsoft reported that its remediation efforts overnight were "not as hoped," and the issue also affected Microsoft Teams and the AI assistant Copilot. Downdetector recorded nearly 130,000 reported problems with Outlook by 7:00 PM CET, decreasing to around 37,000 by midnight. Microsoft attributed the issue to "increased usage" in several regions and said it was working on alternative approaches to restore capacity.