Microsoft Still Fixing Outlook and Copilot After Hours-Long Outage

Microsoft was still working to restore access to some office software hours after an outage, saying users might remain unable to connect to services including email and chat. According to Sina Finance, some users could not access Outlook, Teams and Copilot for much of the U.S. workday on Thursday. Microsoft’s products are among the most widely used software at businesses, government agencies and educational institutions. Workhorse Group Inc., a truck and bus manufacturer, said the Microsoft outage prompted it to postpone its earnings report, originally scheduled for Thursday, until Monday. School districts, universities and hospitals warned that communications could be limited. Downdetector recorded a peak of about 200,000 user reports of problems with Microsoft services just after 1 p.m. New York time. Reports involving products including Outlook and Copilot later declined, but that did not mean service had been restored. In a series of status-page updates, Microsoft described efforts to fix the affected systems and redirect user traffic away from affected servers. After initially working to identify the problem and test possible solutions, the company said in an update shortly after 6 p.m. that it had observed “limited recovery in some regions.” In a 5:11 p.m. update, Microsoft said it was pursuing all available options to restore service because its efforts so far had not produced the expected results. The company said its investigation found that an overloaded core process on affected servers had caused them to stop responding and reduced capacity. In a post on X earlier Thursday, Microsoft said users in any region could be affected. A spokesperson thanked customers for their patience as the company worked to restore service as quickly as possible. The company also listed products users might be unable to access; services for IT professionals, including cybersecurity software, file-sharing services and management tools, were affected as well.