Microsoft 365 outage disrupts Outlook, Teams for thousands of users

Microsoft 365 outage disrupted Outlook, Teams and other services as thousands of users reported access issues, prompting frustration and reliability concerns

A widespread Microsoft 365 outage left thousands of users unable to access core workplace tools on Thursday, disrupting email, messaging, and collaboration services relied on by businesses worldwide. Users reported problems with key applications including Outlook, Teams, and other productivity tools offered by Microsoft.

Microsoft 365 outage sparks thousands of complaints

According to Downdetector, reports of the Microsoft 365 outage began climbing Thursday afternoon, with complaints spiking around 3 p.m. ET. At the peak, more than 16,000 users said they were experiencing issues accessing Microsoft 365 services, highlighting the scale of the disruption.

Microsoft responds as service disruptions persist

Microsoft acknowledged the issue on its service status page, stating that “users may be seeing degraded service functionality or be unable to access multiple Microsoft 365 services.” The company later posted on X that it had “restored the affected infrastructure to a healthy state” at approximately 4:14 p.m. ET. However, Microsoft added that it was still “rebalancing traffic across all affected infrastructure,” suggesting the Microsoft 365 outage was not fully resolved at that point.

Despite those assurances, frustration continued to spill over on social media. Some users said they were still unable to send or receive emails hours later. “We cannot even email. This is not fixed,” one user wrote on X, echoing complaints from businesses that rely heavily on Microsoft 365 for daily operations.

In a statement shared Thursday night, a Microsoft spokesperson said a “subset of customers may be intermittently impacted” and directed users to ongoing updates via the Microsoft 365 Status account on X. As of late afternoon, intermittent access issues persisted for some customers, prolonging the Microsoft 365 outage for certain regions and organizations.

Users demand compensation after productivity hit

The incident renewed calls for compensation when major technology platforms experience service disruptions. Some users pointed to Verizon, which last week offered customers a $20 credit following a significant wireless outage, as an example Microsoft should consider.

Past outages raise reliability concern

Thursday’s Microsoft 365 outage also revived memories of a major disruption in 2024, when a flawed update from CrowdStrike triggered global system failures. That incident caused thousands of flight delays, hospital disruptions, and banking outages, underscoring how deeply enterprise software failures can ripple through the global economy.

While Microsoft says it is stabilizing its systems, the latest Microsoft 365 outage highlights ongoing concerns about reliability as businesses become ever more dependent on cloud-based productivity platforms.