Microsoft has faced difficulties restoring its Outlook services after a major global outage disrupted access to email, Teams and its artificial intelligence assistant, Copilot.

The hours-long disruption affected users across multiple regions, leaving businesses, government departments and individuals unable to access essential communication services.

Microsoft attributed the connectivity problems to elevated demand on parts of its infrastructure, admitting that its initial recovery efforts were not delivering the expected results.

In an update posted on X, the company said it was exploring alternative measures to increase capacity and address the disruption.

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"We've monitored the status of the changes applied to improve serviceability and confirmed they're not taking as expected. We're identifying alternate workstreams that can be applied to increase capacity in the face of sustained traffic management imbalances," Microsoft said.

Microsoft Outlook Outage Affects Users Worldwide

The disruption spread beyond the Americas, where Microsoft initially began investigating reports of service problems.

The company later confirmed that Microsoft 365 connectivity issues appeared to be affecting users across different regions.

"We've determined a portion of infrastructure is experiencing elevated load across multiple regions, which is likely contributing to the connectivity errors," Microsoft said in another update.

"We're aggressively pursuing all pathways to reduce impact," it added.

Outage monitoring platform Downdetector reported that Microsoft's services were affected in 74 countries and territories.

A map shared by the platform on X showed reports of disruptions across the Americas, parts of Europe, Asia and Africa.

New Zealand was among the affected countries. Its Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade reportedly issued a notice warning that the outage had affected its ability to receive emails.

The disruption also affected the country's diplomatic missions abroad.

"ability to receive emails has been affected by the global Microsoft outage. This also impacts all New Zealand Embassies, Consulates and Representative Offices around the world," the notice stated.

Microsoft Rules Out Known Malicious Activity

As reports of connectivity problems continued, Microsoft said it had found no indication that malicious activity was responsible for the outage.

"As of now, we are not aware of any malicious activity that is causing this incident. We will continue to treat this incident with urgency and priority until full resolution," the company said.

Microsoft 365 is the technology company's cloud-based subscription service, which includes applications such as Outlook and Teams.

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Thousands of users also reported difficulties accessing Teams and Copilot, according to Downdetector.

The outage tracker recorded a sharp decline in user reports around 04:50 GMT in Washington and Hong Kong, although service disruptions continued to be reported elsewhere.

Microsoft Reports Limited Recovery As Restoration Continues

Microsoft issued several updates as its engineers worked to restore services, but acknowledged that recovery was taking longer than expected.

In one update posted shortly after 6pm Eastern Time, the company said it was observing limited recovery while attempting to redirect user traffic away from affected servers.

"As capacity is restored, users may experience a gradual recovery as their clients reconnect," Microsoft said.

The company did not initially provide a definitive timeline for the full restoration of affected services.

The disruption highlighted the reliance of businesses and government institutions on Microsoft's cloud-based platforms for everyday communication and operations.