Microsoft says efforts to fix global outage 'not going as expected' with millions impacted worldwide

Microsoft is struggling to fix the widespread outage that has knocked out various platforms, including Outlook, for millions worldwide with the company acknowledging that efforts to restore services were 'not taking as expected.'

Millions of users around the world began reporting that Outlook was down shortly after 1pm Eastern time on Thursday.

More than ten hours later, users remain unable to open their inboxes and send emails.

More than 430 million people use Microsoft’s suite of subscription service apps, though the company has not confirmed exactly how many users are affected by the outage. 

Users have also reported issues with Microsoft’s workplace messaging app, Teams, its artificial intelligence assistant, Copilot, as well as other Microsoft 365 services.

Microsoft said Thursday night that it was attempting to identify 'alternate workstreams that can be applied to increase capacity in the face of sustained traffic management imbalances’ in order to address the outage.

Earlier today, the company said that infrastructure experiencing an 'elevated load across multiple regions' was likely contributing to the connectivity errors. 

A Microsoft executive vice president, Charles Lamanna, said Thursday night on X: 'For now I can confirm that there is no indication this is the result of malicious or cyber activity.'

Microsoft said Thursday night that efforts to restore services following a widespread outage were 'not taking as expected'

Millions worldwide have been unable to open and use Microsoft Outlook, as well as other Microsoft services, for most of the day

Previously, Microsoft said a number of servers had become 'unexpectedly unavailable' because of a problem that caused them to fail during 'automated health checks.' 

It was not immediately clear why that failure happened. 

The company later said it was testing a fix and rolling out an alternative method to bring the impacted servers back online.

'We’re aggressively pursuing all pathways to reduce impact,' Microsoft's 365 Status account wrote on X.

Around noon, Microsoft posted that 'mitigative actions' had 'successfully restored service health and functionality' in North America.

Users insisted that was not the case as they continued reporting the outage which landed in the middle of the workday for many.

Australian Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke also said Microsoft had told him the company ​did not believe the outage had been caused by a cyber attack, according to Reuters. 

Microsoft said earlier on Thursday that infrastructure experiencing an 'elevated load across multiple regions' was likely contributing to the massive outage

OpenAI said that the Microsoft outage had resulted in ChatGPT suffering from a 'degraded performance' on Thursday

Other platforms have also been affected by the Microsoft outage. 

OpenAI said Thursday afternoon that it was 'investigating an issue with Microsoft connectors where new connections may be broken and tools are not working as expected.' 

The company noted that ChatGPT had suffered a 'degraded performance.' 

Another AI giant, Anthropic, reported that users were experiencing issues caused by a Microsoft 365 service incident.

Anthropic said that mail, calendar and search tool functions in its Microsoft 365 connector were failing for most requests.

The outage even affected jails around the US, with the Arapahoe Sheriff's Office in Colorado posting Thursday evening on X that officials were unable to receive email notifications needed to process online bond payments. 

As a result, anyone needing to post bond for immediate release was asked to do so in person at the jail.

The New York City Department of Investigation noted that evictions scheduled for Friday were suspended as a result of the outage.

Microsoft has also touted that more than 90 percent of Fortune 500 companies use Copilot, its AI assistant.

More than 430 million people use Microsoft’s suite of subscription services (Photo of the Microsoft campus in Redmond, Washington)

The outage happened on the same week that Microsoft released a security fix to address an unrelated vulnerability in which hackers could gain access to sign-in information.

That would allow them to impersonate victims and potentially access accounts or workplace systems. 

Microsoft released a fix for that vulnerability on November 10 as part of its security updates. However, affected computers remain vulnerable until the relevant patch is installed.

Users should open an Office application, such as Word, select File, then Account, and choose Update Options followed by Update Now. 

In classic Outlook, the account menu may instead be called Office Account. 

The vulnerability has already been used in real attacks.

Until that update is installed, users should avoid opening unexpected attachments or message files, even if they seem to come from known senders.