A major outage has hit Microsoft platforms including Outlook, leaving thousands of users struggling to access their emails and other services. More than 3,000 UK users reported issues on outage tracker Downdetector shortly after 6pm, with the majority struggling to log in to their accounts. In the US, almost 130,000 people have been affected.

Reports have fallen since that peak, but many users continue to complain of being unable to send or receive emails, while others are struggling to load their inboxes altogether. Thousands of users have also reported problems with Microsoft's workplace messaging app, Teams, its AI assistant Copilot and wider Microsoft 365 services.S1S3

Microsoft confirmed connectivity issues across multiple regions, saying it was working to resolve problems initially reported in the US. "We're aggressively pursuing all pathways to reduce impact," the company said. "We've paused all deployments, we're moving additional traffic off the affected infrastructure, and we're restarting affected servers to return them to service."S1

Microsoft said a part of its infrastructure was experiencing "elevated load", which likely explained the connectivity errors. The company said the load was not driven by an increase in traffic, but by a number of servers being unexpectedly unavailable, straining the remaining infrastructure.S1

In its latest update, posted at 9:40pm, Microsoft said it was continuing to restart affected servers and was examining whether rolling back some recent changes to its systems could speed up recovery. Some users expressed frustration, noting that the company had already said it was restarting servers more than two hours earlier. Hollywoodlife's coverage likewise asked how much longer the Outlook outage would last as Microsoft worked to restore service.S1S2