The short version
- El Nuevo Día reported that Microsoft is investigating problems affecting Exchange Online mailboxes and Microsoft Teams, and that the company listed the incidents as EX1550543 and TM1550488
- According to BBC News and ABC News, Microsoft said the extra load was caused by servers being unexpectedly unavailable, not by an increase in traffic
- ABC News reported that Microsoft later said its steps had restored Teams service; mailbox access and other Microsoft 365 services were still being worked on
- Metro Puerto Rico, citing Downdetector, reported more than 100,000 Outlook reports in the United States; BBC News and Anadolu Agency published different totals from the same kind of tracker
What Microsoft has told customers
El Nuevo Día reported that Microsoft is investigating technical problems that affect access to Microsoft 365 services, including Exchange Online mailboxes and Microsoft Teams features. The San Juan newspaper, citing the company's posts on X, said difficulties accessing Exchange Online mailboxes were first reported in the Americas through several connection methods, and that Microsoft later said Microsoft 365 connectivity could be affected for users in any region.
ABC News reported that Microsoft first described users having trouble with Teams functions in North America, then said it was looking into reports of people in the Americas who could not reach Exchange Online mailboxes by more than one access method. ABC News quoted Microsoft as saying the Exchange problems could be tied to infrastructure "experiencing elevated load across multiple regions," and later as saying: "We determined the elevated load isn't driven by an increase in traffic, but by a number of servers being unexpectedly unavailable; straining the remaining infrastructure." BBC News published the same explanation and said Microsoft had first reported the issue in the United States before warning that users "in any region" could be affected.
Microsoft's public service health page listed a service degradation for Microsoft 365 (Business or Enterprise) and said users may be unable to connect to multiple Microsoft 365 services. The same page said no Azure issues were detected at that time. Anadolu Agency reported that Microsoft had paused deployments, redirected traffic away from the affected systems and restarted affected servers. ABC News quoted a later company update saying it was pursuing every path to reduce the impact, had paused deployments, was moving more traffic off the affected infrastructure and was restarting servers to put them back into service.
BBC News said that in a further update issued at 19:50 GMT, Microsoft said it was "testing a configuration" to fix a problem that was "causing servers to fail automated health checks and become unavailable." ABC News and Anadolu Agency reported that restarting affected servers was among the steps Microsoft was taking; they did not say every affected machine was already back in service. El Nuevo Día reported that Microsoft identified the incidents as EX1550543 for Exchange Online and TM1550488 for Teams, and said customers can follow both cases in the Microsoft 365 admin center. Anadolu Agency said Microsoft pointed users to its status site and the admin center under the references EX1550543 and MO1550821, a second code that does not appear in El Nuevo Día's account.
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How wide the disruption appeared
Metro Puerto Rico reported that Microsoft is investigating an interruption affecting Outlook, Microsoft 365, Teams and other online services after tens of thousands of users reported trouble reaching email accounts and productivity apps. Metro, citing Downdetector, said reports rose quickly in the afternoon, with more than 100,000 Outlook incidents in the United States and thousands more involving Microsoft 365 and Teams. Anadolu Agency gave different Downdetector figures for the United States: more than 97,000 Outlook reports, more than 38,000 for Microsoft 365 and about 4,500 for Teams, and cautioned that Downdetector's totals, which come from user submissions, may not match the true number of people affected.
BBC News said Downdetector showed more than 131,000 reports of Microsoft Outlook problems in the United States at 18:15 GMT, and a spike in U.K. reports around 18:30 GMT. Metro Puerto Rico said users reported trouble sending and receiving email, opening inboxes and using calendar functions, on the web as well as in desktop and mobile apps. Only Metro reported collateral effects on other companies, saying OpenAI was looking into problems with some Microsoft-based connectors and that Anthropic had described similar trouble with its Microsoft 365 integration.
On Teams, the accounts do not line up exactly. ABC News quoted Microsoft as saying, shortly after the first Teams report: "Our mitigative actions have successfully restored service health and functionality." El Nuevo Día offered a more cautious version, saying Microsoft indicated that automated recovery tools had already taken steps to restore the service and that monitoring showed a reduction in the impact. Metro Puerto Rico said that, as of its report, Microsoft had not said when it expected to restore service fully.
What the reports say, and do not say, about Puerto Rico
El Nuevo Día framed the disruption as affecting access to Outlook and Teams in various countries and did not describe specific outages, office closures or user counts on the island. Metro Puerto Rico likewise reported the U.S. and regional picture, including Downdetector totals for the United States, and did not publish Puerto Rico-specific figures.
The geographic scope in the company messages, as relayed by El Nuevo Día and ABC News, started with Exchange problems in the Americas and a Teams issue in North America, then widened when Microsoft said Microsoft 365 connectivity could affect users in any region. BBC News reported that same later warning. Those statements would include Puerto Rico within the Americas and within "any region," but none of the cited outlets documented a confirmed local outage on the island.
Where the sources differ
The outlets agree that Microsoft was investigating Microsoft 365 connectivity problems on Thursday and that Exchange Online mailbox access was affected. They differ on the tallies drawn from Downdetector: Metro Puerto Rico reported more than 100,000 Outlook reports in the United States, Anadolu Agency reported more than 97,000 Outlook reports plus separate Microsoft 365 and Teams totals, and BBC News reported more than 131,000 U.S. Outlook reports at 18:15 GMT, along with a later spike in the United Kingdom. El Nuevo Día listed incident codes EX1550543 and TM1550488; Anadolu Agency listed EX1550543 and MO1550821. ABC News described Teams as restored; El Nuevo Día described a reduced impact from automated recovery. Only Metro Puerto Rico reported effects on OpenAI and Anthropic connectors. BBC News, alone among these accounts, reported the 19:50 GMT note about a configuration that caused servers to fail health checks.
What the reports do not say
None of the cited reports gives a Puerto Rico-specific outage count, names island companies or agencies that lost service, or says when Microsoft expects a full return to normal. Microsoft's public status page confirms a Microsoft 365 degradation but does not break the problem out by country or territory. The reports also do not identify a completed root cause beyond Microsoft's account of servers becoming unavailable and, in the later BBC update, failing automated health checks. No source in this account attributes the disruption to a cyberattack.
Sources
Every link below was opened and checked when this story was published. Official means a government body, agency or the organization itself; Reporting means a news outlet.
- Official Microsoft service health status
- Reporting Problemas en Microsoft 365 afectan el acceso a Outlook y Teams en distintos países
- Reporting Microsoft investiga falla que provocó caída de Outlook
- Reporting Microsoft outage sees Teams, Outlook and Copilot suffer 'connectivity issues'
- Reporting Outlook outage: Microsoft reports 'issues' with Teams and email
- Reporting Microsoft blames server outages for widespread Microsoft 365 disruptions
How we checked this
El Nuevo Día and Metro Puerto Rico reported the outage for a Puerto Rico audience, while BBC News, ABC News and Anadolu Agency supplied later company updates and differing Downdetector totals. Microsoft's public status page confirmed a Microsoft 365 service degradation. The account above follows those pages, each of which was opened and checked before publication.
Compiled by the PuertoRico.com News Desk from the reports and statements listed above, and checked against them before publishing. It does not include original interviews. Spot an error? Email support@puertorico.com with a link to this story.
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