Microsoft is battling to restore its Outlook email service following a major global outage that disrupted access to several of its popular products, including Microsoft Teams and its artificial intelligence assistant, Copilot.
The disruption, which Microsoft attributed to unusually high traffic across parts of its infrastructure, affected users worldwide, including businesses, government institutions and diplomatic missions that rely on the company’s services for daily communication.
The technology giant admitted that its initial recovery efforts were not producing the expected results, prompting it to explore alternative solutions to restore normal operations.
In a statement posted on X, Microsoft said it had monitored the changes introduced to improve service delivery but confirmed that they were not working as anticipated. The company added that it was identifying alternative measures to increase system capacity and reduce the impact on affected users.
According to outage-monitoring platform Downdetector, the disruption spread across 74 countries and territories within an hour, affecting users in the Americas, Europe, Asia and Africa. Thousands of users also reported difficulties accessing Microsoft Teams and Copilot.
New Zealand was among the affected countries, with its Ministry of Foreign Affairs confirming that the outage had disrupted its ability to receive emails. The disruption also affected New Zealand’s embassies, consulates and representative offices worldwide.
Microsoft initially reported that it was investigating connectivity problems in the Americas but later confirmed that the disruption was affecting Microsoft 365 users across multiple regions.
As the outage continued, Microsoft said it had identified elevated traffic across several parts of its infrastructure as a likely cause of the connectivity problems. The company also reported limited recovery after attempting to redirect user traffic away from affected servers.
Microsoft warned that service restoration could be gradual as system capacity improves and users reconnect to its platforms. However, it had not provided a definite timeline for the complete restoration of services.
The incident highlights the growing dependence of businesses, governments and organisations worldwide on cloud-based technology for communication and daily operations.
