WASHINGTON — A massive Microsoft outage left millions of users around the world without access to their email and work apps on Thursday.
Reports of problems with Outlook, the company’s email client, climbed to about 130,000 on the outage tracking site Downdetector shortly after 1pm Eastern Time (18:00 GMT), with some users saying emails weren’t being sent or received, while others couldn’t open their inboxes.
Users also reported having trouble accessing Microsoft’s workplace messaging app Teams and its AI assistant Copilot, along with other Microsoft 365 services. The company said the issues could impact users in any region.
Microsoft said on X that servers were unavailable and failing automatic health checks, putting pressure on those still operating. It said it was testing a configuration change to redistribute traffic that was elevated on parts of its infrastructure and restarting affected services to bring them back online.
“We’re working to safely return them to service,” the company said.
In the United States, fed-up workers at some companies went home early on Thursday. In Australia, businesses couldn’t print invoices and some schools couldn’t hold online classes on Friday.
And there was no quick fix. As of 3:30 a.m. GMT on Friday, the outage was still widespread, affecting untold millions of people.
Microsoft is posting updates on X and on its “service health status” page.
“We’re seeing positive results with our efforts to restart affected infrastructure and recover server availability in an isolated manner,” Microsoft said in an update at 1:59 a.m. GMT.
But in another post at 3:13 a.m. GMT, the company said, “We’ve monitored the status of the changes applied to improve serviceability and confirmed they’re not taking as expected.”
“We’re identifying alternate workstreams that can be applied to increase capacity in the face of sustained traffic management imbalances,” the company added, leaving users on X befuddled.
The disruption has been going on for many hours, causing a wide range of reactions.
Some US office workers celebrated the email blackout and joked that they could start the weekend early. Others barely missed a beat, connecting with colleagues via Slack, phone and even the old-fashioned in-person way.
But the outage, which began around noon on the US East Coast, caused serious headaches, especially when it dragged on for more than an hour or two.
So small businesses scrambled for Microsoft alternatives to communicate. Local governments alerted constituents to call instead of email.
In Australia, Friday began with a realization that the Microsoft cloud was unresponsive. The outage took out live feeds from courts, and schools texted parents to phone in any absences until email systems were restored.
Australia’s national broadcaster, ABC, reported people missing job interviews because they couldn’t connect to virtual meetings, and even some supply issues with distribution centers stocking supermarkets due to the outage.
At first, Microsoft said the connection issues were happening “in the Americas,” but over time it became clear the troubles were global.
Downdetector showed a peak of 130,000 reports about Outlook outages, but that figure understated the scope of the problem, since most people do not report their experiences.
According to Downdetector, the number of reports slowed as the business day ended in the US.
Around that time, Microsoft indicated that some servers were back up and running, but email access was still sporadic for many users.
“Our actions taken thus far have not provided the anticipated relief,” the company said in a post at 10:09 p.m. GMT.
Microsoft tried to reassure customers that it was taking all possible steps to restore access.
But a subsequent update said that “the servers we returned to service can become unresponsive again once they receive traffic” — in other words, Outlook was down again.
Source: Saudi Gazette