Global outage hits Microsoft platforms

 A widespread outage hit Microsoft platforms including Outlook on Thursday in some 70 countries, with many users encountering trouble using their email accounts and other errors across the tech giant's suite of apps.

The disruptions, which were first reported after midday Eastern time and continued into the night, were also impacting many companies and some government operations.

Nearly 130,000 users on outage tracker Downdetector reported problems accessing Outlook, Teams, as well as its AI assistant Copilot and wider Microsoft 365 services.

In several notices posted on social media, Microsoft said it was investigating the disruptions and parts of its infrastructure were "experiencing elevated load" - which it said was partly to blame for the connectivity errors. The Redmond, Washington-based company determined a number of servers failed during automated health checks and that its alternatives to bring those servers back online were not immediately taking effect.