Microsoft restores Outlook after global outage hits 74 countries

Microsoft Outlook suffered a global outage Thursday, disrupting email and chat services for users in 74 countries across the Americas, Europe, Asia, and Africa. The company attributed the failure to increased load on its infrastructure and is working to restore services. The disruption, lasting over nine hours, also affected other Microsoft products including Teams and the AI assistant Copilot. Microsoft suspended installations, redirected traffic, and restarted affected servers while posting continuous updates on X, noting gradual improvement as capacity returns. The outage, tracked by Downdetector, was one of the most severe for the tech giant in recent years. Microsoft initially investigated reports in the Americas but later confirmed connectivity issues for Microsoft 365 users in any region.