Microsoft Outlook outage affects thousands of users worldwide

Several thousand Microsoft Outlook users experienced service disruptions between Wednesday night and Thursday morning, with many reporting problems accessing their inboxes or signing in to the platform.

The Microsoft 365 status page first acknowledged the issue Wednesday evening, stating that the company was investigating the cause. Although a fix was initially deployed, Microsoft later said that the remedy encountered problems and required correction.

“We identified an issue with the initial fix, and we’ve corrected it,” Microsoft 365 Status posted on X (formerly Twitter) Thursday morning. “We’re continuing to deploy the fix, and we’re closely monitoring the deployment to ensure no further issues are encountered.”

As of 11:30 a.m. ET on Thursday, more than 2,770 users globally had reported problems with Outlook, according to outage tracking site Downdetector. Microsoft has not disclosed the specific cause of the outage, and a company spokesperson declined to provide additional details when contacted by the Associated Press.

Outlook, formerly known as Hotmail, is one of the core services in Microsoft’s suite of productivity tools and is widely used by individuals and businesses around the world.

SR