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 7.43am this morning, there were around 3,945 incidents reporting issues with the email platform Outlook in the UK, compared to 1,461 for Teams.
Users in areas including Manchester, London, Birmingham, Norwich, Oxford, Brighton and Cardiff reported problems.
It also reported more than 3,900 incidents of people reporting issues with Microsoft Teams, with more than 900 in India and Japan.
Reports of outages also surged in Australia and the United Arab Emirates.
During the outage, most users were unable to exchange messages, join calls, or use any functionality of the Team application.
“We are investigating an issue affecting several Microsoft 365 services. More information can be found under MO502273 in the Admin Center,” Microsoft tweeted.
It later added: “We have identified a potential network issue and are reviewing telemetry data to determine next troubleshooting steps.”
Many users posted on social media to share the update, with #MicrosoftTeams becoming 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.
Microsoft Teams is used by more than 280 million people worldwide and has become an integral part of the daily operations of businesses and schools, which use the service to make calls, schedule meetings and organize workflows.
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.