Is Outlook down? Widespread outage hits Microsoft email and other apps

A widespread outage hit Microsoft platforms including Outlook on Thursday, with many users encountering trouble using their email accounts and other errors across the tech giant's suite of apps.

Nearly 130,000 users on outage tracker Downdetector reported problems accessing Outlook just after 1 p.m. ET. New reports have since fallen from that peak, but many said they couldn't send and receive emails or had trouble loading their inboxes altogether.

Thousands also reported issues with Microsoft's workplace messaging app Teams, as well as its AI assistant Copilot and wider Microsoft 365 services.

Microsoft said it was investigating disruptions, notably related to its email and Teams applications.

In updates posted on social media, Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft said it was aware of users "experiencing issues accessing Exchange Online mailboxes through multiple connection methods in the Americas."

Microsoft explained that a portion of its infrastructure was "experiencing elevated load" — which it said was "likely contributing to the connectivity errors." The company determined a number of servers were "unexpectedly unavailable" due to a problem that caused them to fail during "automated health checks."

It was not immediately clear what exactly caused that failure. But Microsoft later said it was testing a fix and rolling out an alternative method for these checks to bring impacted servers back online.

"We're aggressively pursuing all pathways to reduce impact," the Microsoft 365 Status account wrote on X.