Microsoft Outlook and Teams Go Down for Users Across the U.S.; Microsoft Cites Overloaded Infrastructure

Many Americans who rely on Microsoft for work email lost access for part of Thursday afternoon, as an outage hit Outlook, Teams and other Microsoft 365 services across the country.

Problems began around noon to 12:30 p.m. Eastern time, according to Breitbart and Newsweek ^[3][2]. Outage tracker Downdetector logged more than 130,000 Outlook problem reports at the peak, around 1:15 p.m. Eastern, while reports for Microsoft 365 as a whole topped 48,000 at about the same time, Newsweek reported ^[2]. Breitbart said elevated error reports showed up across nearly every Microsoft service, including Copilot ^[3]. The Independent described the disruption as widespread across the company's suite of apps ^[4].

What Microsoft said

Microsoft acknowledged the trouble on its Microsoft 365 Status account on X. The company first flagged problems with Teams in North America, then said, "We're investigating reports of users experiencing issues accessing Exchange Online mailboxes," pointing to multiple connection methods in the Americas, ABC News reported ^[1]. Exchange Online is the service behind business and school Outlook mailboxes.

Microsoft later widened that assessment, saying the issue "may affect Microsoft 365 service connectivity for users in any region," according to Newsweek ^[2]. The company tracked the problem under incident number EX1550543, which administrators can follow in the Microsoft 365 admin center ^[2][3].

As for the cause, Microsoft said "a portion of infrastructure is experiencing elevated load across multiple regions," Breitbart reported, which the outlet said was likely contributing to the connection errors ^[3]. Microsoft's own status page failed to load for some users during the disruption ^[3]. ABC News reported that the company had identified a possible problem and was working on a fix ^[1].

Who was hit

Users reported trouble with both the Outlook app and the website. About 36 percent of Outlook complaints on Downdetector involved the app, Newsweek reported ^[2], and users around the country said they could not reach their email accounts and related services, according to Breitbart ^[3]. The Daily Mail reported thousands of users with website, login and app issues ^[5].

For the businesses, schools and offices that run on Outlook and Teams, an afternoon outage means missed messages, stalled meetings and work that piles up until service returns.

Is it fixed?

Not fully, as of Thursday afternoon. Newsweek reported that complaints had started to fall on Downdetector, but that it was unclear when Microsoft's services would be completely restored ^[2]. Microsoft had not announced a final fix or a restoration time in the coverage we reviewed.

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It is not the first disruption this year. In August, an earlier Outlook outage was blamed by Microsoft on a misconfiguration that kept sign-in components from deploying correctly, Breitbart noted ^[3].

Users who still cannot connect can watch Microsoft's status updates on X, and workplace IT administrators can follow incident EX1550543 in the admin center for the latest ^[2]. We will update this story when Microsoft says service is back.