Teams, Outlook down for thousands around world, Microsoft investigates

Tech giant Microsoft say there’s been a global outage impacting many of its tools including Outlook and Microsoft Teams
Other services, including Xbox Live and Microsoft 365, have also been experiencing issues. (AFP/File)
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Updated 25 January 2023
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Teams, Outlook down for thousands around world, Microsoft investigates

Tech giant Microsoft say there’s been a global outage impacting many of its tools including Outlook and Microsoft Teams
  • Downdetector recorded tens of thousands of reports from around the world
  • Microsoft said the problem is caused primarily by networking configuration issues

LONDON: Microsoft has launched an investigation after thousands of users globally were unable to access the instant messaging app Teams and email platform Outlook, the firm said in a statement on Wednesday.

Downdetector, the website status monitoring service, recorded on Wednesday morning tens of thousands of reports from users unable to properly access Teams, Outlook, Xbox Live, and Microsoft 365.

In the statement shared on Twitter, Microsoft revealed that it had “isolated the problem to networking configuration issues” and was “analyzing the best mitigation strategy to address these without causing additional impact.”

The company added that it had also “rolled back a network change” believed to have been contributing to the issue.

The outage prevented many users from exchanging messages, joining calls, or using any of Teams’ features, in numerous cases prompting office workers to resort to other similar platforms.

More than 280 million people around the world use Microsoft Teams, and the app is of critical importance for businesses as well as educational institutes.

The outage comes after Microsoft, which has more than 220,000 employees throughout its global offices, recently announced plans for 10,000 job cuts.