NEARLY 130,000 users reported problems accessing Microsoft Outlook on Thursday as a major service disruption affected multiple regions, prompting the technology giant to take emergency measures to restore access.
Microsoft confirmed that the outage was caused by increased workloads on parts of its infrastructure across several regions, resulting in connectivity problems.
AFP cited the company initially said it was investigating reports of an outage affecting the Americas before warning that access to Microsoft 365 services could also be affected across all regions.
Microsoft said it was taking immediate action to mitigate the impact of the disruption.
According to outage monitoring website Downdetector, nearly 130,000 users reported problems with Outlook shortly after 1pm Eastern Time (6pm GMT).
The number of reports subsequently declined, with about 50,000 users still reporting access problems as of 4.30pm Eastern Time (9.30pm GMT).
In a statement on X, Microsoft said it had identified increased workloads on parts of its infrastructure across several regions, which could be contributing to connectivity issues.
“We are taking all necessary steps to mitigate the impact of this outage,” the company said.
Microsoft had temporarily halted all system deployments, redirected some traffic away from affected infrastructure and restarted malfunctioning servers as part of efforts to restore services.
The disruption also affected other Microsoft products, including Teams and its artificial intelligence assistant Copilot, with thousands of users reporting access problems, according to Downdetector.
Microsoft 365 is a cloud-based subscription service providing access to the company's range of productivity applications, including Outlook and Teams. - November 13, 2026
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