A widespread Microsoft outage is continuing to cause disruptions to email services and other Outlook applications across the country this afternoon, affecting hundreds of thousands of individuals, businesses and government agencies across the country.
The outage has impacted Microsoft’s Outlook email platform and other Microsoft 365 services, with users reporting difficulties accessing their inboxes, sending messages and receiving emails.
According to reports, nearly 130,000 users reported problems accessing Outlook through Downdetector, an online service that tracks website and application outages, shortly after 1 p.m. Thursday. Thousands of additional users reported problems with Microsoft Teams, Copilot and other Microsoft services.
Microsoft acknowledged the disruptions, saying it was investigating reports of users experiencing difficulties accessing Exchange Online mailboxes through multiple connection methods in the Americas.
The company later said that elevated demand on portions of its infrastructure was contributing to connectivity problems, after some servers unexpectedly became unavailable. Microsoft said it was working to redistribute network traffic and restore affected systems. A timeline for the full restoration of services was not immediately available.
The outage is also affecting municipal operations in Ocean County.
Jackson Township Mayor Jennifer Kuhn issued a notice informing residents that the township’s departments are currently unable to send or retrieve emails because of the Microsoft outage.
“I want to assure our residents that your emails are NOT being ignored,” Kuhn said. “Unfortunately, our departments are currently unable to send or retrieve emails due to this outage.”
Kuhn said that once email service is restored, township staff will work diligently to respond to all correspondence as quickly as possible.
“We appreciate your patience and understanding as we work through this issue, which is beyond the Township’s control,” the mayor said.
Microsoft 365 has roughly 321 million users globally, according to Dynamics Connect. It was unclear how long the outage might last.
