Microsoft 365 Outage Disrupts Outlook, Teams and Copilot Across Multiple Regions

Microsoft is working to restore access to Microsoft 365 services after a major outage disrupted Outlook, Teams and other tools for users in multiple regions. The company first flagged problems with Exchange Online mailboxes in the Americas late on Thursday, then confirmed that the disruption could affect Microsoft 365 users in any part of the world.

According to the Microsoft 365 status page, affected users may be unable to open their mailboxes through Outlook on the web, mobile email apps that rely on Exchange ActiveSync, and other connection methods. Microsoft said a portion of its infrastructure is experiencing elevated load across several regions, which is likely behind the connection errors, and it is also reviewing an unexpected rise in a specific type of service traffic to determine whether it contributed to the problem.

The company said it is aggressively pursuing all pathways to reduce impact. As part of its response, Microsoft has paused all deployments, distributed connection traffic across its global infrastructure, shifted more traffic away from the affected systems and begun restarting impacted servers. It has not disclosed how many users are affected or when service will be fully restored.

The incident follows a separate Teams disruption in North America earlier on Thursday, which Microsoft said was fully resolved by around 10:09 PM Pakistan time. Updates on the latest outage are being shared in the Microsoft 365 admin center under incident EX1550543.

The disruption comes weeks after a Google Cloud outage affected banks, courts and businesses, highlighting how dependent organisations have become on a small number of cloud providers. For Pakistani businesses, telecom operators and government offices that rely on Microsoft 365 for email and collaboration, even short outages can interrupt communication and workflow.

Microsoft has not yet provided a timeline for full recovery, and users in affected regions are advised to monitor the admin center for further updates while alternative communication channels are used where possible.