Global Microsoft 365 outage: Thousands affected in Netherlands

Microsoft 365 is experiencing a major global outage, leaving tens of thousands of users unable to access their emails. Thousands of reports have been received from people in the Netherlands experiencing issues due to the outage, which includes services such as the email platform Outlook, the meeting app Teams, and the AI assistant Copilot.

Microsoft says it is working “flat out” to mitigate the impact of the outage, which is expected to persist for some time. Attempts to resolve the issue have not yet yielded the desired results, Microsoft said on its website. Microsoft’s software is widely used by businesses, government agencies, and educational facilities.

As of approximately 8:15 a.m. on Friday, the Dutch website allestoringen.nl had recorded nearly 2,800 outage reports about Outlook, nearly 700 about Microsoft 365, and over 200 related to Teams.

Several regional broadcasters are affected by the outage. Omroep Flevoland and RTV Utrecht wrote on their respective websites that they are experiencing issues receiving emails.

According to the international outage-tracking site Downdetector, the issues are affecting 74 countries and territories.

Microsoft attributes the disruption to “increased load’ on its infrastructure. At present, the company does not suspect that hackers are behind the issues.

The situation has prompted many jokes on social media. “If Outlook isn’t back up within 30 minutes, are you legally allowed to go home from work?” one user wrote on X. Another joked: “Take your time - the peace and quiet is wonderful.” Others took the opportunity to criticize the job cuts Microsoft has implemented.