Microsoft Teams is down again to start another workweek in Europe (Update: It's back)

Microosft Teams iOS and Surface
Microosft Teams iOS and Surface (Image credit: Windows Central)

What you need to know

  • Microsoft Teams is down for some people across Europe.
  • This is the second time this month that a workweek began with a Microsoft Teams outage, though this outage seems smaller than the last one.
  • Microsoft Teams is seeing dramatically more use than normal due to the current health crisis.

Updated March 30, 2020: The spike seems to have ended and Microsoft Teams appears to running smoothly again. Microsoft never issued a statement about this outage, so it could have been limited to a small subset of users.

Microsoft Teams is down for some users across Europe. Complaints of the service being down started spiking around 9 am BST, according to Downdetector (via TechRadar). This is the second time this month that Microsoft Teams has been down to start the European workweek, but the outage this morning seems to be smaller. Microsoft Teams is experiencing unprecedented usage during the current health crisis. Teams has at least 44 million daily active users, which could be a cause of the outages.

In addition to all of the people that already used the premium Microsoft Teams before the current health crisis, Teams is being used by people who took advantage of Microsoft's free six-month trial of Teams. As a result, more people are on the service than ever.

Reports on Downdector this morning appear to spike at 58 reports within a 15-minute timeframe. The outage appears to have reached its apex at 10:04 am. For comparison, on March 16, 2020, reports peaked at 1,576 reports at any 15 minute to time frame. Downdetector relies on reports, so it won't be an exact measure of outages, but it's a good gauge of how many people experience issues.

While the outage seems smaller according to reports, it has poor timing as millions of people are working from home and studying from home due to current health events.

The Microsoft 365 Status Twitter account has not addressed the current outage at the time of publication. We'll update this article as we receive more information about the outage and when it's fixed.

Sean Endicott
News Writer and apps editor

Sean Endicott brings nearly a decade of experience covering Microsoft and Windows news to Windows Central. He joined our team in 2017 as an app reviewer and now heads up our day-to-day news coverage. If you have a news tip or an app to review, hit him up at sean.endicott@futurenet.com.