Microsoft hit by widespread outage

Detailed summary

A widespread outage hit Microsoft platforms including Outlook overnight, with many users encountering trouble using their email accounts and other errors across the tech giant’s…

Microsoft is applying an age-old IT fix as it attempts to restore services, turning servers off and on again after tens of thousands of users reported outages around the world.

The widespread outage hit Microsoft platforms including Outlook, Teams and its Copilot AI chatbot as many users encounter trouble with accessing or sending emails and other errors across the tech giant’s apps.

Nearly 130,000 users on outage tracker Downdetector reported problems accessing Outlook and other Microsoft services, beginning just before 5am (AEDT). At one point, reports to the platform reached almost 20,000 per minute, stemming from outages across five Microsoft services in 74 countries.

New reports have since fallen from that peak, but many said they couldn’t send and receive emails, or had trouble loading their inboxes.

Thousands also reported issues with Microsoft’s workplace messaging app Teams, as well as its AI assistant Copilot and wider Microsoft 365 services.

Servers had to be restarted after they stopped responding while the company worked to validate a change aimed at fixing the outage.

“We’re now applying this change more broadly,” Microsoft said. The company is also preparing an automated recovery process to detect and restart other unresponsive servers.

“A small number of configuration updates” have been identified as “potential contributors” to the issue but investigations are continuing, Microsoft said.

The issue has prevented organisations from sending or responding to emails on Friday morning.

Opening of the article, excerpted from The Sydney Morning Herald. To read the rest, open the article on the publisher's site.