Tens of thousands of users have been unable to access their emails since Thursday evening due to an outage of Microsoft’s Outlook email service. The disruption also affects certain functions of artificial intelligence (AI) assistants connected to Microsoft accounts.
According to the outage tracking site Downdetector, nearly 130,000 users reported problems with Outlook on Thursday shortly after 6:00 PM GMT (7:00 PM in Paris). Within an hour, the outage affected Microsoft products in 74 countries and territories, according to the same source. A map published on X shows affected users across the entire American continent, as well as in parts of Europe, Asia, and Africa.
Downdetector also indicates that between 5:00 PM and 6:55 PM UTC, nearly three in ten reports came from outside the United States. At 6:25 PM UTC, reports concerning five Microsoft services reached 19,650 per minute, compared to less than 15 per minute on an average Thursday. Around 7:38 PM UTC, they were still exceeding 11,000 per minute.
Among the affected countries is New Zealand, whose notice states that its “ability to receive emails has been affected by the global Microsoft outage.” The text adds that this “also impacts all New Zealand embassies, consulates, and representations worldwide.” In Japan, Economy Minister Ryosei Akazawa anticipates in the Asahi Shimbun newspaper a “significant impact,” due to the high number of people using the affected Microsoft software.
Outlook, Teams, and Copilot affected
Microsoft stated on X on Thursday evening that the issue appeared to affect “connectivity to the Microsoft 365 service for users, regardless of their region.” This cloud-based subscription service, meaning it runs on remote servers accessible via the internet, bundles applications like Outlook and Teams.
AI assistants that connect to Microsoft accounts to read emails or check calendars are also affected. In addition to Copilot, Microsoft’s AI assistant, Claude and ChatGPT were also impacted. Anthropic and OpenAI, which develop them, reported that their assistants could no longer access Microsoft 365 services.
No sign of cyberattack, according to Microsoft
Microsoft attributes the disruption to a “high load” on its infrastructure. According to the company, this “is not due to an increase in traffic, but to an unexpected number of servers becoming unavailable, which is putting strain on the remaining infrastructure.” For his part, Charles Lamanna, one of the company’s executive vice presidents, stated on the same social network: “At this stage, I can confirm there is no sign of malicious activity or a cyberattack.”
In a statement published midday, Microsoft states it has “made further progress towards recovery.” The company cites “improvements in key areas, including access to mailboxes and processing of backlogged emails,” while noting that some intermittent issues “may persist.”
