Outlook Down: Exchange Online Mailboxes Fail Across the Americas
Microsoft’s Outlook email was down for users across the United States starting shortly after noon, according to CNN. Microsoft said on X that it was investigating problems reaching Exchange Online mailboxes through several connection methods in the Americas.
The disruption lasted through much of the workday. As of 8:00 p.m. ET, Microsoft had not announced that service was fully back.
What is not working
Exchange Online is the Microsoft service that hosts mailboxes for Outlook. Microsoft said in its 8:00 p.m. ET update that Microsoft 365 services that connect to Exchange Online and email are affected. The company listed Outlook, SharePoint, Teams, 365 and Copilot AI.
The company’s wording points to the Americas as the affected region. CNN described the impact as nationwide in the U.S. and said office workers could not get into their email.
What Microsoft has said about the cause
Earlier in the day, Microsoft attributed the trouble to “failed health checks.” Health checks are automated tests that tell a system whether a server is working properly. The company said the failures may have come from one component on the affected servers that processes those checks.
Later, Microsoft said it was restarting those servers because they had stopped responding. It also said it was “aggressively pursuing all pathways to reduce impact.” The company has not described any further cause in the material CNN reported.
How many users reported problems
Downdetector, a site that collects user complaints, counted more than 130,000 Outlook problem reports at the peak earlier in the afternoon, CNN reported. By 8:00 p.m. ET the figure had fallen to roughly 31,000. These are tallies of user-submitted reports, not a measure Microsoft has confirmed.
Why it matters for workers and businesses
Email, calendars, shared files and chat all depend on the same Microsoft 365 services at many offices, so an Exchange Online failure can reach beyond the inbox. The company’s list of affected services shows that Teams and SharePoint were caught up in the same incident.
CNN noted that some employees seemed unbothered by the lost access. One X user wrote that with no Outlook and no Teams, everyone might as well go home.
What users can check
Microsoft has posted updates on X during the incident, and its service status information is the official place to follow progress. Microsoft has not published any user-side workaround in the reporting available, and the restarts it described are happening on its own servers.
Source: CNN