Microsoft's Outlook email system and its Teams collaboration platform experienced significant outages across the Americas on Thursday afternoon, impacting hundreds of thousands of users. According to outage tracker Downdetector, over 140,000 reports of disruptions were logged by 1:30 p.m. ET.
Microsoft confirmed the issues, stating that a number of servers became unexpectedly unavailable, which consequently strained the remaining infrastructure. The company has not yet specified the cause of the server issues but is working to restore services. "We’re investigating reports of users experiencing issues accessing Exchange Online mailboxes through multiple connection methods in the Americas," Microsoft said in a statement. The company's service page for its suite of products, including Microsoft 365, was reportedly buffering for a considerable time before indicating service disruptions.
Outlook is a widely used email and calendaring service by both businesses and individuals, and Teams is a popular platform for workplace communication and collaboration. The widespread nature of the outage highlights the reliance on these services for daily operations.