Microsoft outage disrupts Outlook and Teams, affecting thousands

A vast number of Microsoft users were unable to connect to Outlook email and the Teams collaboration tools for hours Monday after the software giant fumbled a change to its internal systems.

Higher than normal U.S. outage reports began as the workday kicked off on the East Coast and peaked hours later in the early afternoon before tapering off, according to the tracking site Downdetector. Worst hit was the web version of Outlook, with the phone and desktop apps faring better, the site said.

In a social media post Monday, the company said a “recent change” had affected users trying to access Exchange Online and the Microsoft Teams app and that it was trying to resolve the problem.

“We’ve started to deploy a fix which is currently progressing through the affected environment,” Microsoft said. “While this progresses, we’re beginning manual restarts on a subset of machines that are in an unhealthy state.”

Microsoft 365 is a cloud-based package of applications that includes services such as Word, Outlook and the workplace video platform known as Teams.