Downed Microsoft tools cause issues with online learning, services restored

PHOENIX - A major outage of a tech giant's platform across the state and across country interrupted work and school for countless people, Monday, Sept. 28.

In a world that’s relying on digital connection more than ever, an outage certainly is not ideal, but at around 3 p.m., Microsoft and most of its most popular tools like Office, Outlook and Teams went down almost nationwide.

This impacted students as school was still in session for many.

“He was pretty freaked out because he was in the middle of working on homework due tomorrow," said Beth Cato, the mother of a school-aged son.

It was a confusing scenario for both she and her son in Buckeye.

“It’s something we’ve been trying to prepare my son for. He’s 15, he’s autistic, he needs that routine. It could be something like this, it goes down, our internet, our provider. It could be servers, out of our control," Cato said.

The services have since been restored.

Some city of Phoenix employees were impacted by the outage, too.

At the same time, some 911 services went down in Arizona, but have since been restored.

CenturyLink said it was an issue with a vendor, but it’s unclear if the two outages were related.