Microsoft says Outlook outage fixes are not working as hoped, seeks alternative solutions

In brief

• Microsoft said its fixes for the global Outlook outage were not producing the expected results and that it was seeking alternative ways to add capacity.
• The outage, which lasted several hours, also disrupted Teams and Copilot and was reported in 74 countries and territories.
• In Europe and North America some services began returning, but in the UK the disruption hit emergency health service operations.

Fixes fall short

Microsoft said on Thursday that changes it had made to restore Outlook service did not work as intended. In a post on X, the company said it was now looking at alternative approaches to increase capacity while traffic management remained unbalanced („Microsoft“: veiksmai, kurių imamasi pašalinti „Outlook“ sutrikimus, neduoda norimų rezultatų – Diena.lt). It did not say when full service would return („Microsoft“ stengiasi pašalinti pasaulinius „Outlook“ veikimo sutrikimus – Bernardinai.lt).

Scope of the outage

The disruption, which lasted several hours, was linked by Microsoft to higher load on its infrastructure. Beyond email, it hit Teams and the Copilot AI assistant. Users, including businesses and governments, reported being unable to communicate through Outlook.

The outage spread quickly. Within less than an hour it affected Microsoft products in 74 countries and territories, according to the monitoring platform Downdetector. Its map showed problems across the Americas and parts of Europe, Asia and Africa. New Zealand's foreign ministry said that consular services had been affected by the Microsoft disruption.

Europe and the UK

Microsoft said recovery was showing promise in Europe, while services had also begun returning in North America („Microsoft“ praneša apie „vilčių teikiančią“ paslaugų atkūrimo pažangą – ve.lt). In the United Kingdom, one of the largest trade unions said the outage was having a serious effect on the health service. Staff at the National Health Service taking emergency calls were reportedly unable to pass on patient information in the usual way, creating a large backlog of requests („Microsoft“ sutrikimas visame pasaulyje: milijonai žmonių liko be prieigos prie „Outlook“ ir „Teams“ – vz.lt).

What happens next

Microsoft has not published a firm timeline for complete restoration. Users are being advised to watch the company's official status channels for updates.

Read also

• Microsoft Outlook Hit by Fresh Global Outage as Exchange Online Users Lose Email Access
• Global Microsoft outage disrupts Outlook, Teams and Microsoft 365 for hours