Microsoft's biggest services are all facing major outages right now. Outlook, Teams, Copilot, OneDrive, and Azure all appear to be affected. The issues have lasted at least 18 hours, though there are now some signs of improvement.

According to DownDetector, tens of thousands of users are affected by the outage for each Microsoft service. Around 1:15 PM ET, there were nearly 130,000 reports. There are now fewer than 10,000 reports of issues with Microsoft services.

The full impact is likely much broader than indicated by DownDetector. The outages became front-page news and affected productivity across a broad range of industries.

Initially, services from Google, Steam, Cloudflare, and AWS appeared to have outages coinciding with Microsoft's issues. Spokespersons from AWS and Cloudflare reached out to me to clarify that their respective services were not down.

When this many services experience outages simultaneously, there is likely a common underlying cause, but we're still awaiting confirmation of what's behind the issues.

Chatter on social media suggests that the cause of the outages is complex and resistant to repair, though it will likely be weeks before we get a detailed report of what happened.

The Microsoft 365 Status account on X is providing updated information on the outages.

This is already one of the worst outages in recent memory. One of my colleagues received an email this morning calling the Microsoft outages "the biggest IT event in history." That's a bold claim, but the issues rank among the worst I've ever seen.

Charles Lamanna, EVP of Copilot, Agents, and Platform at Microsoft, confirmed that there is "no indication this is the result of malicious or cyber activity."

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The engine that powers Copilot Chat in Visual Studio just got an upgrade. Microsoft says the new experience can complete more coding tasks despite using the same AI models as before. The updated Copilot experience now uses the same technology that powers GitHub Copilot CLI, the GitHub Copilot app, and VS Code.

Microsoft tested the new and old Copilot experiences by having each perform 157 coding tasks. The new engine resolved up to 21 more tasks, completing 124 tasks compared to 103 for the older experience.

Tests were performed on C# projects across .NET Framework and .NET Core, Azure and Aspire, and WinForms and desktop apps. Microsoft also tested the new engine on C++, Python, and other languages.

Generally, developers don't judge AI by whether it can answer a question. They judge it by whether it actually saves time. If Copilot can fix a bug, review code, find an issue, or complete a task in fewer attempts, it provides real value to developers. Microsoft says that's exactly what's happening.

Developers often spend as much time verifying AI-generated code as they do writing it. If Copilot can complete more tasks correctly on the first attempt, it can save quite a bit of time.

If you've ever used ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini, or another AI tool, you've likely run into the same problem. AI tools have a habit of sending users down the wrong path. The difference between a useful AI response and an almost useful AI response is often several minutes spent rewriting prompts, correcting mistakes, or double-checking information.

The new Copilot Chat has several new capabilities, such as allowing you to type a new instruction while it is in the middle of a task. Copilot will also show the results of actions it takes rather than simply listing attempted steps.

If a task is handled by a subagent, Copilot will show a dedicated card that lists every step taken as it occurs.

Microsoft argues the updated Copilot experience makes developers more productive by providing shorter, more focused responses and completing more tasks successfully. The company also says the new experience handles larger and more complex jobs more effectively, which could mean less time spent cleaning up AI output before a project is ready.

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If you have an Outlook, Hotmail, Live, or MSN email address, don't assume every missing email ended up in your spam folder. A recent issue caused some messages sent to those types of email addresses to be rejected and bounced back to senders instead of reaching recipients.

It might seem like a nice break to not get emails for a few days, missing important messages can cause issues. The underlying cause was a mistake related to spam enforcement rules. Microsoft has rolled back the update that included the problem, so normal functionality should be restored.

"Some users may intermittently be unable to send email messages to Outlook.com, Hotmail.com, or Live.com email addresses," explained Microsoft in an incident report highlighted by the website lazyadmin.

While the issue was related to spam enforcement rules, affected messages did not simply end up in recipients' spam folders. Microsoft's mail servers rejected the emails and bounced them back to senders instead.

That's an important distinction because recipients have no way to find emails that were never delivered. If you were expecting an important message over the last few days and it never arrived, it may be worth following up with the sender rather than digging through your spam folder.

The issue may also have gone unnoticed in some cases. If someone claims they emailed you recently but nothing ever arrived in your inbox, there's a chance the message was affected by the bug and returned to the sender before reaching your account.

Senders may be able to determine if they were affected by checking for non-delivery reports, sometimes called bounce messages. Errors mentioning Outlook.com, Hotmail.com, Live.com, MSN.com, or codes such as "550 5.7.1" and "AS9031519" could indicate that a message was rejected during the incident.

A successful resend also does not necessarily mean there was never a problem. Reports from affected users suggested the issue was intermittent, with some messages bouncing initially before being delivered successfully when sent again later.

I occasionally need to check my spam filter to find messages that were mistakenly flagged as spam. This happens more when work emails are involved, but Outlook can be overly aggressive with personal emails as well.

But this bug was different. Instead of being delivered to a spam folder, some messages never reached recipients at all.

The issue was primarily related to mail destined for consumer Microsoft email accounts, including Outlook.com, Hotmail, Live, and MSN addresses. Microsoft 365 business mailboxes were not the focus of the reported delivery failures.

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