CHICAGO: A widespread outage hit Microsoft platforms including Outlook on Thursday, with many users encountering trouble using their email accounts and other errors across the tech giant's suite of apps.

The disruptions, which were first reported after midday Eastern time and continued into the night, were also impacting many companies and some government operations.

Nearly 130,000 users on outage tracker Downdetector reported problems accessing Outlook just after 1 pm EST. New reports have since fallen from that peak, but many said they couldn't send and receive emails or had trouble loading their inboxes altogether.

Thousands also reported issues with Microsoft's workplace messaging app Teams, as well as its AI assistant Copilot and wider Microsoft 365 services.

Users in many parts of Asia also reported issues with Microsoft platforms as of Friday midmorning in the region.

In Japan, deputy chief cabinet secretary Masanao Ozaki said Friday that the Microsoft outage had affected the government's IT infrastructure and that they were “keeping a close eye on the developments.”

In several notices posted on social media, Microsoft said it was investigating the disruptions and that parts of its infrastructure were “experiencing elevated load" -- which it said was partly to blame for the connectivity errors. The Redmond, Washington-based company determined a number of servers failed during automated health checks and that its alternatives to bring those servers back online were not immediately taking effect.

“We're aggressively pursuing all pathways to reduce impact,” the Microsoft 365 Status account posted on X.

Earlier in the day, the company said it had “successfully restored” Microsoft Teams in North America, although some users continued to report connectivity issues.