Microsoft Outlook outage stretches on for hours

Microsoft said it was working to restore service as a widespread outage of Outlook email and other products stretched on for hours Thursday.

"We’re seeing positive results with our efforts to restart affected infrastructure and recover server availability in an isolated manner. We’re actively monitoring the performance of these portions of infrastructure to verify stability, which we suspect will support improved availability as these actions are subsequently expanded more broadly," the company wrote in an update on X.

Downdetector, which monitors outages, reported issues with Outlook, Teams and other products on Thursday, as Microsoft attempted to deploy several fixes.

Amid the Outlook outage, the company said that some infrastructure was "experiencing elevated load across multiple regions" due to strain from a "number of servers being unexpectedly unavailable."

"We're aggressively pursuing all pathways to reduce impact," the company said. "We've paused all deployments, we're moving additional traffic off the affected infrastructure, and we're restarting affected servers to return them to service."

In the ensuing hours, Microsoft has detailed actions it has taken to try to bring servers back to service, some of which it said did not provide the "anticipated relief."

Around 6 p.m. ET Thursday, the company said it was "returning a portion of affected servers to the service, and they remain stable so far," though later updated that the servers "can become unresponsive again once they receive traffic" and was working on a fix for that.

Earlier, Microsoft also reported some users were experiencing issues with Microsoft Teams. The company shortly updated that "mitigative actions have successfully restored service health and functionality."

Amid the outage, New York City's Emergency Management Department warned residents of potential delays in reaching city agencies.

"If you are trying to contact a New York City agency by email or access an online City service that relies on Microsoft systems, you may experience delays or temporary disruptions," NYC Emergency Management said on social media. "These issues may affect the delivery of emails, responses from City agencies, and access to certain online services."

For more urgent requests, the city advised residents to try using an alternative method to contact the agency, and to call 311 for non-emergency city services and 911 for emergencies.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.