Microsoft works to restore Outlook, Teams and Copilot after outage

Outlook, Teams and Copilot were unavailable to some users for most of the US workday on Thursday, and the BBC reported connectivity problems with the services.[1][2] The BBC described the outage as global, affecting tens of thousands of users, with disruptions reported in the US, Japan and Singapore, among other places.[2] Bloomberg said Microsoft was still struggling to restore access to some flagship software more than nine hours after the outage began.[1] Downdetector recorded nearly 140,000 reports of Outlook issues globally at about 18:00 GMT on Thursday.[2]

Microsoft said some users might be unable to view certain files or calendar details, and that Copilot might not work properly during the disruption.[2] The company said messaging and online meetings were largely functional.[2] That distinction matters for teams deciding which tasks can continue: chat and meetings may remain available even when access to files, calendar information or Copilot is affected. Microsoft 365 is an online service used by businesses that includes Outlook, Teams and OneDrive.[2] The service-health page said users might be unable to connect to multiple Microsoft 365 services.[3]

Microsoft said servers unexpectedly becoming unavailable strained its remaining systems and caused the outage.[2] The company said it was seeing positive results in efforts to restore services and was rushing to fix the problem.[2] It thanked customers for their patience while it worked to restore services.[2] Microsoft also warned that some services that had been restored could become unresponsive again.[2] The BBC reported no indication that a cyberattack caused the outage.[2] Separately, Microsoft’s service-health page said it had detected no Azure issues at the time of its status notice.[3]

The BBC reported that the outage affected AI companies Anthropic and OpenAI, which work with Microsoft’s systems.[2] OpenAI said it was investigating a problem with its connections to Microsoft services that caused some tools not to work as expected.[2] Workhorse Group moved its third-quarter results announcement from November 12 to November 16, citing disruption from the outage.[2] Bloomberg described the disruption as one of Microsoft’s most severe in recent memory.[1] The BBC also noted that Microsoft had reported an Azure outage the previous month that affected productivity tools and companies worldwide.[2]