Microsoft has rolled out a workaround for outages that hit Outlook, Exchange and Teams, and recovery is ongoing. It turned out to be due to a recent system change.

Microsoft has rolled out a fix to restore the email and calendar services to the users who have suffered owing to outages in Microsoft 365. More than 5,300 reports were recorded on Down Detector by lunchtime on Monday, with thousands of users affected by the incidents. By evening, the number has dropped dramatically but still pending complete restoration.

The majority of affected services include the Microsoft Outlook, Exchange, and Sharepoint services; complaints were generally about Exchange Online-application-and even Microsoft Teams calendars. Fixing-up efforts began early Monday morning at 9 am for this issue, including manually restarting most machines stuck in what they term 'unhealthy states.' Real progress is less than some users expected. Microsoft, however, reported that there was observable recovery up until 6 pm.

According to Microsoft, the problem happened because of a "recent change" done to some of their systems, which was rolled back after the issue arose. Unfortunately, what this change is wasn't specified by Microsoft, nor did they say how it affected the outage.

The same day, Microsoft rolled out its new Recall AI for Windows Insiders to allow snapshots of activities of the computer for future search. It was first introduced in May, but the public release was delayed owing to concerns about privacy.

Microsoft 365-which encompasses Outlook and Teams-is used by millions across the globe, 320 million of them estimated to be active monthly users of Teams. Microsoft continues to be a giant in the tech industry with a $3 trillion valuation recently hit, therefore remaining one of the world's most valuable companies.