Why is Microsoft Outlook down? What the company's investigation has found

Technology Why is Microsoft Outlook down? What the company's investigation has found In an update around 4:10 pm., Microsoft said it was "opening all available pathways to restore service, as our actions taken thus far have not provided the anticipated relief." By Izzy Stroobandt and Alex Dvorak • Published 41 minutes ago • Updated 14 seconds ago After more than 130,000 people across the U.S. reported issues with Microsoft 365 and Outlook on Thursday afternoon, the company announced its investigation revealed several factors contributing to the outage. The company said it determined the problems that started around noon were in part because a "portion of infrastructure is experiencing elevated load across multiple regions, which is likely contributing to the connectivity errors." Stream NBC 5 for free, 24/7, wherever you are. WATCH HERE In a later update, the company said the elevated load was not from an increase in traffic but instead from a number of servers that "unexpectedly" became unavailable and prompted a strain on the remaining infrastructure, and that their technicians were also working to address a problem that was causing servers to become unavailable after failing automated health checks. Reports peaked at just over 130,000 people experiencing issues with Outlook around 12:20 p.m., with Chicago, Seattle and New York among the hot spots in the U.S. By 3 p.m., reports had significantly dipped but more than 56,000 users were still reporting issues. Reports of issues with Microsoft 365 followed a similar trend, with reports peaking at just above 45,000 around 12:25 p.m., and dropping to roughly 19,700 by 3 p.m. In an attempt to remedy the problem, Microsoft said it was taking a number of steps, including "redistributing connection traffic across our broader worldwide infrastructure to help balance the load," testing configuration changes, pausing deployments, restarting servers and moving additional traffic off the affected infrastructure. We're aggressively pursuing all pathways to reduce impact. We've paused all deployments, we're moving additional traffic off the affected infrastructure, and we're restarting affected servers to return them to service. More info under EX1550543 and MO1550821 in the Microsoft 365… — Microsoft 365 Status (@MSFT365Status) November 12, 2026 The company also said it has not identified a recent change that could have triggered the problems, however, the investigation "indicates the failed health checks may originate from a specific component that's responsible for processing server health. We've taken steps to prevent additional servers from being impacted while we work to return the affected servers to service." Local Movies 54 minutes ago Roeper's Reviews: Chilling, at times disturbing version of ‘A Christmas Carol' Will County 2 hours ago Father charged in 2022 death of his infant son in Will County In an update around 4:10 pm., Microsoft said it was "opening all available pathways to restore service, as our actions taken thus far have not provided the anticipated relief. We found a core process on affected servers is becoming overwhelmed, causing capacity loss. To validate a potential recovery, we're isolating a portion of infrastructure, restarting affected components, and reintroducing traffic to confirm the services remain stable before applying the change more broadly." We’re opening all available pathways to restore service, as our actions taken thus far have not provided the anticipated relief. We found a core process on affected servers is becoming overwhelmed, causing capacity loss. To validate a potential recovery, we're isolating a portion… — Microsoft 365 Status (@MSFT365Status) November 12, 2026 No additional information was immediately available. Check back for more on this developing story. This article tagged under: Technology