Microsoft has traced a global outage affecting Outlook, Teams and other apps to overwhelmed servers, although the company's efforts to fix the issue were "not taking as expected".
The tech giant said a process on the affected servers that handled secure connections had become overloaded, causing the servers to stop processing requests.
Global Microsoft outage causes havoc for Outlook users - Watch on TVNZ+
Tech giant said it was trying to roll back network changes that coincided with the start of the problems. (Source: 1News)
It said it was testing a configuration fix on some servers before applying it more widely, and had limited traffic in some locations while it checked the servers stayed stable.
In an update, Microsoft said the changes applied to improve serviceability were "not taking as expected".
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Thousands also reported issues with Microsoft's workplace messaging app Teams, as well as its AI assistant Copilot and wider Microsoft 365 services.
Health NZ said its Digital Services team was working with Microsoft to get things back up and running, with some services reverting to "more manual systems to keep things moving".
"There have been no reports of impacts to patient safety. Where email is commonly used to communicate with patients or providers, we are using alternative contact methods such as phone calls, fax, or printing of physical forms, to minimise any disruption," a spokesperson told 1News.
"We are also utilising Microsoft Teams channels and local intranet to communicate with staff."
Immigration NZ has paused processing of visa applications due to the outage, which has also delayed planned system changes by a week.
"This also means that customers cannot apply at the moment through our enhanced Immigration Online platform. But there is no impact on customers being able to request a New Zealand Electronic Travel Authority (NZeTA) to travel to New Zealand and our service continues as usual."
Parent Laura Payne said she had three children doing exams this year, two in year 11 and one in year 9.
She said the Microsoft outage meant they couldn’t access any of their class notes, or study materials such as sample questions and answers.
“They've got all their exams next week,” she said. “So we're hoping this outage gets sorted real soon.”
She said there were a lot of students in the same position.
“It's just really not great timing, especially those who are doing exams for the very first time,” she said.
In updates posted on social media, Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft said it was aware of users “experiencing issues accessing Exchange Online mailboxes through multiple connection methods in the Americas".
Earlier, Microsoft explained that a portion of its infrastructure was “experiencing elevated load" — which it said was “likely contributing to the connectivity errors". The company determined a number of servers were “unexpectedly unavailable” due to a problem that caused them to fail during “automated health checks".
It was not immediately clear what exactly caused that failure. But Microsoft later said it was testing a fix and rolling out an alternative method for these checks to bring impacted servers back online.
“We're aggressively pursuing all pathways to reduce impact,” the Microsoft 365 Status account wrote on X.
Earlier in the day, the company said it had “successfully restored” problems related to Microsoft Teams in North America, although some users continued to report connectivity issues.
The morning’s headlines in 90 seconds including a sexpionage scandal claiming a tech CEO and the collapse NYC building. (Source: 1News)
– with additional reporting from Associated Press
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