Large Microsoft 365 outage hits Outlook and Teams

Microsoft has confirmed a large outage affecting Microsoft 365, including the email service Outlook and the workplace messaging and video app Teams. The company's AI assistant Copilot is also affected.

Users in the Netherlands are affected too. They reported problems with Outlook and Microsoft 365 on Allestoringen, an outage tracker. Microsoft acknowledged the problem on its own website and on social media.

Microsoft said the problems affect both the business and the consumer versions of Microsoft 365. Consumers may have trouble with Outlook and OneDrive, the company said. For business users, the same goes for Teams, Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, Copilot 365 and Microsoft Defender XDR, the company said.

Microsoft blames the problem on overloaded infrastructure. Some servers became unreachable, which overloaded the remaining ones. The company wrote on social media that it is trying to bring the failed servers back online "in a safe way" and is working to limit the impact.

Microsoft's software is widely used by companies, government bodies and educational institutions, so a failure of the email and collaboration services can disrupt daily work in many organisations. The disruption is not limited to one country. It has spread across the world, and Microsoft says it is working to bring the affected servers back into service.

The municipalities of Leeuwarden, Bergen, Montfoort, Krimpenerwaard, Kampen, Steenwijkerland and Twenterand say their digital access is limited, and the province of North Holland is harder to reach by email. The University of Twente and Radboud University warned students of possible problems, and SURF, which runs the shared network of Dutch universities and colleges, was also affected.

On Friday Microsoft apologised. "We are deeply sorry that this outage has affected our customers and partners. We know they rely on our services to work, and we take that responsibility extremely seriously," the company said. It said the cause is a technical problem that has nothing to do with cyberattacks or AI. A spokesperson said the problem arose during an upgrade of network capacity.

Microsoft reported "encouraging progress" in recovery, including in Europe, but said services are not yet back at normal capacity and users may still have problems. It extended the email time-out window to 48 hours so that delayed messages are not lost while recovery continues. The outage had lasted almost 24 hours.

Ziekenhuis Amstelland, a hospital in Amstelveen, said on its website that it cannot be reached by email. Stock exchange operator Euronext asked listed companies to phone rather than email when they pass on information.