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Outlook Outage: Microsoft Says Your Email Should Be Working Again
Some Outlook users were unable to access their email for a good chunk of the Thursday workday.
Microsoft confirmed Outlook had problems Thursday.
If you had difficulty accessing your email today, you weren't alone. Microsoft confirmed on Thursday that it was experiencing issues with its email service, Outlook.Â
The affected Outlook users experienced trouble accessing Outlook either through the web browser, mobile app or desktop client. The problems began around 5 p.m. PT on Wednesday, according to Downdetector, and started to pick up significantly around 2 a.m. PT on Thursday. (Downdetector is owned by the same parent company as CNET, Ziff Davis.)
"Users may be unable to access their mailbox using any connection methods," Microsoft said in a service status update during the outage.
By Thursday afternoon, Microsoft said, the problem had been resolved. It didn't offer much by way of explanation, saying simply this in the initial post to its service status page: "We've determined that a portion of mailbox infrastructure isn't performing as efficiently as expected, resulting in impact."
'Everything is up and running'
A new post to Microsoft's service status page offers good news: "Everything is up and running." The company says it has verified that the service is "healthy" through telemetry -- that is, data collection -- and by confirming things with customers who were affected by the outage. The issues with Outlook access lasted for just over 19 hours.
65% solution
Microsoft says it's more than halfway there with getting things back in order. Its service status update as of a little after 11 a.m. PT says this: "The expedited configuration change has reached about 65 percent of affected infrastructure. We're continuing to see a sharp increase in service availability worldwide as the deployment continues." The company expects "full saturation" in the next hour.
Meanwhile, on Downdetector, outage reports are still coming in, but have dropped to about 12% to 15% of where they were at their peak.
Downdetector reports dropping
It looks like many people who were previously unable to access Outlook have had their service restored. There's been a sharp decline in Downdetector reports in the past half hour.
Meanwhile in Microsoft's latest update it says: "We've begun a broad expedited deployment of the configuration change across all affected infrastructure. We expect most impacted users will experience relief within the next two hours, as the fix saturates the environment."
Hang in there if you still have no access -- it looks like normal service will be resumed shortly.
Issues with Microsoft 365?
According to Downdetector, users of Microsoft 365 -- the productivity suite that includes Outlook, along with Word, Excel and Powerpoint -- is also having issues today. But the number of reports is far smaller than for Outlook itself. On Microsoft's service status page, the company says "Everything is up and running" with the consumer version. Â
Regional differences
Microsoft says it is "reviewing options to leverage an expedited deployment methodology in regions which are experiencing the highest levels of impact." This implies that some areas of the world are feeling the effects of the outage more than others.
As an Outlook user here in the UK, I've not had any issues accessing my email today. Meanwhile in the US, Downdetector is currently seeing around 2,500 reports.
'We're working on it'
On Microsoft's own service status page, the company says: "We're having issues, but we're working on it."Â
It appears the problem is due to underlying configuration issues, and that Microsoft actually first noticed problems around 3 p.m. PT yesterday. Another update from the company is due in just over an hour -- hopefully it will be good news.