Microsoft said efforts to repair a major outage of Outlook were not going as expected and that it was seeking alternative solutions, leaving users around the world without access to crucial services. The hours-long disruption, which Microsoft attributed to "elevated load" on its infrastructure, has hit email as well as products such as Teams and the AI assistant Copilot.

The disruption spread globally within an hour, knocking out Microsoft products in 74 countries and territories, according to outage tracker Downdetector. Users ranging from companies to governments reported being unable to communicate via Outlook. In New Zealand, the foreign ministry said its ability to receive emails had been affected, which also impacted all New Zealand embassies, consulates and representative offices around the world.S1

Microsoft initially said it was investigating reports in the Americas, but later confirmed the issue appeared to affect Microsoft 365 service connectivity for users in any region. Microsoft 365, the company's cloud-based subscription service, includes applications such as Outlook and Teams. The company said a portion of its infrastructure was experiencing elevated load across multiple regions, likely contributing to connectivity errors, and that it was aggressively pursuing all pathways to reduce impact.S1

Microsoft later reported limited recovery as it sought to route user traffic away from affected servers, and said users might experience a gradual recovery as their clients reconnected. Indian media reported that the outage, which affected millions globally, had also hit users in India given their reliance on Microsoft Office services, with automated health checks taking affected servers offline due to high infrastructure loads.S1S2