Microsoft is investigating an outage that left thousands of users around the world unable to access the site’s services, including Teams and Outlook.
It didn’t say how many people were affected, but Downdetector.com, which tracks the outage through a range of sources including user reports, recorded thousands of people reporting issues with Teams, Outlook, Microsoft 365 and XBox Live.
It showed that as of 8am today, there had been around 4,992 incidents reporting issues with the email platform Outlook in the UK, compared to 2,173 for Teams.
Users in areas including Manchester, London, Birmingham, Norwich, Oxford, Brighton and Cardiff reported problems.
The site also reported more than 3,900 incidents of people reporting problems with Microsoft Teams, with more than 900 in India and Japan. Reports of outages also surged in other countries, including Australia and the United Arab Emirates.
During the outage, most users were unable to exchange messages, join calls or use any features of the Teams app — forcing office workers to return to face-to-face meetings and use other social media platforms to communicate with each other.
Microsoft “We are investigating an issue affecting multiple Microsoft 365 services. More information can be found in the Admin Center under MO502273,” tweeted.
It later added: “We have identified a potential network issue and are reviewing telemetry data to determine next troubleshooting steps.”
Microsoft’s cloud computing division, Azure, also tweeted about the outage, saying some users were experiencing issues with the platform.
Many Microsoft users posted on social media to share updates, and #MicrosoftTeams became the hashtag on Twitter.
“Microsoft Teams and Outlook experiencing issues in Ethiopia…are these services down?” one social media user tweeted.
“Microsoft Outlook, Teams services down in Sri Lanka and globally,” wrote another.
More than 280 million people around the world use Microsoft Teams, and it forms an essential part of the daily operations of businesses and schools, which use the service to make calls, schedule meetings, and organize workflow.
Microsoft Exchange Online, SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business are also among the affected services, according to the company’s status page.
The outage comes as Microsoft – which has more than 220,000 employees, including 6,000 in the UK – announced plans last week 10,000 layoffs in its global operations.
Chief Executive Satya Nadella said in a note to staff that the layoffs, which affect less than 5% of the workforce, are driven by investment amid concerns that the U.S. and other major growth markets are headed for recession. decline.