Microsoft outage impacts Outlook, more amid 'delays' in recovery efforts

(NEXSTAR) — On Monday, many Outlook users signed on to start their week only to encounter problems with Microsoft services like Outlook and Teams. Well into the afternoon, some were still experiencing problems.

User reports on Downdetector show issues with Microsoft 365, Teams, Outlook, and the Microsoft Store began around 5 a.m. ET on Monday.

In a series of posts to X, the Microsoft 365 Status account explained that at around 2 a.m. ET, it was "investigating an issue impacting users attempting to access Exchange Online or functionality within Microsoft Teams calendar."

Later on, the account said a "recent change" was believed to have caused the interruptions. At around 9 a.m. ET, a fix was deployed and "progressing through the affected environment."

Shortly after 11 a.m. ET, Microsoft said the fix had been deployed to roughly 90% of the affected environments as "targeted restarts continue to progress." Less than an hour later, Microsoft reported that the fix had reached 98% of those impacted areas while targeted restarts "are being performed as quickly as possible."

Early Monday afternoon, Microsoft reported that it was "facing delays in our recovery efforts" and "taking immediate action to address them" after it said the targeted restarts were "progressing slower than anticipated for the majority of affected users."

"We understand the significant impact of this event to your businesses and are working to provide relief as soon as possible," the company said just before 1 p.m. ET.

What does this all mean for you? If you can't access Outlook, Teams, or other parts of your Microsoft 365 subscription, you may be stuck waiting on Microsoft's recovery efforts.

In September, another Microsoft outage impacted thousands of people using Outlook, Teams, cloud services, Skype, SharePoint, and more. In that outage, Microsoft blamed a third-party ISP's managed environment for the issues.

Earlier this year, Microsoft was seemingly at the center of another widespread outage that impacted banks, media companies, hospitals, and airports. The initial issue was traced back to CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity company that had pushed out an update to several million Microsoft computers, disrupting their operating systems.

Among the hardest hit by that outage was Delta Air Lines, which claimed in a recent lawsuit against CrowdStrike that their operations were crippled for several days. Delta canceled about 7,000 flights over a five-day period during the peak summer vacation season.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.