Technology and Scienceupdated 22m ago2 min read
Microsoft Investigates Outlook, Teams Outage After Servers Become Unavailable in the Americas
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Widespread outage hit Outlook and Teams, disrupting email and collaboration across regions. Downdetector counted roughly 120k–130k users affected; US outages were prominent.
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Outage hits Teams, Outlook
Microsoft said it was investigating reports of users experiencing issues accessing Exchange Online mailboxes through multiple connection methods in the Americas, after it first reported users experiencing issues when accessing or using Microsoft Teams functionality in North America.
Microsoft later said it determined the elevated load was not driven by an increase in traffic, but by a number of servers being unexpectedly unavailable, straining the remaining infrastructure.
Microsoft said it validated an alternative service health check method around 4 p.m. Thursday, allowing a subset of affected servers to successfully return to service, and it said it was applying the change more broadly.
Microsoft said it was preparing automated recovery systems to continually detect and restart unresponsive servers to maintain service stability while the change progressed, and it said it had taken steps to prevent additional servers from being impacted while it worked to return affected servers to service.
Downdetector counts surge
Downdetector showed reports of Outlook problems climbed to about 130,000 shortly after 1pm Eastern Time (18:00 GMT), and the figure had fallen to about 77,000 by just before 3pm (20:00 GMT).
Microsoft said on X that servers were unavailable and failing automatic health checks, putting pressure on those still operating, and it said it was testing a configuration change to redistribute traffic that was elevated on parts of its infrastructure.
NBC News said that as of around 1:30 p.m. ET, more than 120,000 users on Downdetector reported problems accessing Outlook, with many saying they could not send and receive emails or encountered delays.
Microsoft said it was aware of users experiencing issues accessing Exchange Online mailboxes through multiple connection methods in the Americas, and it later said a portion of its infrastructure was experiencing elevated load likely contributing to the connectivity errors.
Recovery steps and uncertainty
Microsoft said it had begun redistributing connection traffic across its broader worldwide infrastructure to help balance the load, and it said it had paused all deployments while moving additional traffic off the affected infrastructure. Microsoft said it was restarting affected servers to return them to service, and it said an investigation indicated failed health checks may have originated from an unidentified component responsible for processing server health.
“Microsoft did not state when it expected services to be fully restored.”
Microsoft told users it was working to safely return affected servers to service, and it said it did not state when it expected services to be fully restored. The outage disrupted access to Microsoft’s workplace messaging app Teams and its AI assistant Copilot, and it also affected other Microsoft 365 services as users reported trouble connecting to work apps.