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Microsoft outlook down for thousands of users
Microsoft users across the country reported connection issues in their Outlook mailboxes Thursday morning.
SEATTLE - Microsoft is working to restore service after a widespread outage Thursday, affecting access to Outlook for hundreds of thousands of users.
The company announced it is applying capacity improvements to bring Microsoft 365 services back online, though no timeline for a full restoration was given.
BERLIN, GERMANY - SEPTEMBER 04: In this photo illustration the Microsoft Outlook App is displayed on the screen of an smartphone on September 04, 2025 in Berlin, Germany. (Photo Illustration by Thomas Trutschel/Photothek via Getty Images)
What we know:
The hours-long outage began Thursday morning after thousands of users were unable to access emails and cloud tools. Microsoft said it was caused by an "elevated system load" after a number of servers went offline, overwhelming the remaining network.
In a later update, Microsoft reported that some servers had returned to service and initially appeared healthy, but they stopped responding again once they began receiving traffic.
Engineers are analyzing data from the affected servers and working to restore service to all affected users. As capacity returns, Microsoft said users may see a gradual recovery as their devices and apps reconnect to the service.
Other impacted Microsoft services include:
- Exchange Online: Users may be unable to access their mailbox using Outlook on the web, Outlook desktop (MAPI), Exchange ActiveSync (EAS), or REST-based connections, and email delivery may be delayed.
- Microsoft 365 admin center: Admins may be unable to load some admin center pages.
- Microsoft 365 apps: Users may be unable to view their recently used files.
- Microsoft 365 Apps Admin Center: Multiple services including Cloud Update, Cloud Policy and Inventory are affected.
- Microsoft 365 Education: Features including Assignments, Reading Progress, and Speaker Progress may be impacted.
- Microsoft Copilot 365: Users may be unable to load Copilot Chat or receive responses in the web and desktop apps, and Copilot experiences may be unable to access work data such as email, calendar and files.
- Microsoft Defender for Office 365: Safe Links may be unable to verify URLs, which may impact users clicking links in Outlook and Teams.
- Microsoft Defender XDR: Users may be unable to load Microsoft Defender portal pages or solution tabs.
- Microsoft Fabric: Users may encounter failures when exporting reports with sensitivity labels to PDF or PowerPoint, or when updating artifacts with sensitivity labels.
- Microsoft Graph: API requests that access Exchange Online data — such as mail, calendar and contacts — may time out.
- Microsoft Intune
- Microsoft Planner: Users are experiencing Plan and Task operation reliability issues.
- Microsoft Purview: Multiple Purview services including Authorization, auto-labeling, Data Loss Prevention (DLP), Communication Compliance, and Data Classification are impacted, and users may be unable to load Microsoft Purview portal pages.
- Microsoft Teams: Scenarios that depend on Exchange Online — including calendar, meeting scheduling, and creating chats for organizations using Information Barriers — may fail. Core messaging and online meetings remain largely functional.
- Microsoft To Do: The app may not load, and users may see operation failures.
- Power BI: All users may intermittently be unable to export reports with MIP sensitivity labels to PDF in Power BI.
- SharePoint Online: Features that depend on Exchange Online may be impacted. Accessing files stored directly in SharePoint Online remains functional.
- Universal Print: Users may encounter errors submitting print jobs or using admin features.
- Windows 365: Customers who have configured their tenant and Cloud PCs to use Microsoft Purview Customer Key for Windows 365 Cloud PCs may have users who are unable to connect to their Cloud PCs.
What we don't know:
Microsoft has not announced an exact time for when all services will be fully restored.
This is a developing story, and will be updated.
The Source: Information in this story came from Microsoft, FOX Business and FOX 13 Seattle reporting.
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