Microsoft works to restore global Outlook outage affecting Teams and Copilot

Microsoft faced a significant global disruption on Thursday that impacted its Outlook services, along with key applications such as Teams and the AI assistant Copilot. The company attributed the outage to elevated load on its infrastructure, which was not resolving as quickly as anticipated. Users worldwide, ranging from businesses to governmental entities, reported difficulties in communicating via Outlook.

Microsoft acknowledged that their repair efforts were falling short of expectations and began exploring alternative strategies to increase service capacity. The disruption was reported in 74 countries and territories, with users experiencing email access issues and the inaccessibility of various Microsoft products. New Zealand's foreign ministry confirmed the impact on their email services, affecting all of their embassies, consulates, and representative offices globally.

Microsoft initially suspected the problem was limited to the Americas, but later confirmed that it had widespread effects across all regions of Microsoft 365, a subscription service encompassing Outlook and Teams. The tech giant stated they were actively pursuing multiple avenues to mitigate the impact of the issue.