Outlook down LIVE: Microsoft outage as email users report issues with Teams and Copilot
It has already tried several solutions to mitigate the problems.
Microsoft users worldwide are struggling to access Teams, Outlook and Copilot as the technology company suffers a global outage.
Microsoft said this morning that it "appreciated the patience" of those impacted. It has been suffering the outage for around 12 hours. OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, also reported issues.
In an update this morning, the Microsoft said that although it had managed to get servers operating multiple times overnight UK time, those servers had crashed.
It had tried several solutions to mitigate the problems, including isolating parts of its infrastructure and shifting traffic to alternate routes.
"We've monitored the status of the changes applied to improve serviceability and confirmed that change is not taking as expected," the company said.
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Vice president's comments
Microsoft executive vice president Charles Lamanna said the outages did not appear to be the result of a cyberattack.
“We regret that today’s outages caused disruptions for our customers, and we are working to address the issue,” he wrote on X.
“We will continue to share more information as soon as we have it, and for now I can confirm that there is no indication this is the result of malicious or cyber activity.”
UK users also affected
Monitoring website Downdetector first showed a spike in users reporting problems with Microsoft Teams in the UK at around 6.15pm on Thursday.
Issues were still being reported this morning.
Users cannot access mailboxes
Users are "experiencing issues accessing Exchange Online mailboxes through multiple connection methods". The issues are mainly affecting users in the Americas, Microsoft said.
Microsoft 'investigating'
Another update read: "We're investigating reports of users experiencing issues accessing Exchange Online mailboxes through multiple connection methods in the Americas. More details can be found in the Microsoft 365 admin centre under EX1550543."
'Servers unavailable'
Another update read: "We determined the elevated load isn't driven by an increase in traffic, but by a number of servers being unexpectedly unavailable, straining the remaining infrastructure."
Incident not a cyberattack, Microsoft says
Microsoft has said the issue is not related to a cyberattack but rather an "elevated load" on its infrastructure in multiple regions.
That means that its servers - powerful computers that process tasks like work tools and other apps - are handling more work than they can usually manage.
The issue isn't caused by an increase in traffic but a number of servers being "unexpectedly unavailable", straining the rest of the infrastructure, the Windows maker said on X.
A key part of affected servers is "becoming overwhelmed" causing the disruption, it later added.
Welcome to out live blog
Microsoft is struggling to fix a global outage, with services including Teams, Outlook and AI software Copilot affected by "connectivity problems", reported by more than 430 million people who use Microsoft 365 apps. Tech giants OpenAI and Anthropic have reported problems as a result of the outage.
A monitoring website reports the outage is affecting users in 74 countries and has been going on for more than 11 hours.
