Microsoft Outlook Email Access Restored After Global Outage Affects Thousands [Updated]

Microsoft's Outlook is currently down for several users globally, and the company has acknowledged that there is an ongoing issue that is impacting access to its email service. Users have reported that they are unable to access emails via Microsoft Outlook on the web, the official Outlook app for iOS and Android, and the Outlook app for Windows and Mac computers. The company says the issue is related to its mailbox infrastructure, and it is already working on applying a fix to resolve the ongoing outage.

Update: Microsoft published an update on its service health status page at 10:55pm IST on Thursday, stating that its configuration changes have made their way to all servers that were impacted in the incident. 

Microsoft Applies Fixes in Attempt to Restore Access to Outlook Email Service

Users began reporting issues with accessing Outlook on Thursday, via the downtime tracker Downdetector. At the time of publishing this story, there were over 800 reports from users stating that they did not have access to the service. The tracker also revealed that 62 percent of users said they were unable to log into their Outlook account, while 34 percent of users could not access the website.

Several users reported issues accessing Outlook on Thursday
Photo Credit: Screenshot/ Downdetector

Microsoft has already acknowledged the ongoing technical issue affecting several users. The company's service health status website indicates the Outlook email service is affected by "service degradation" and the latest update from Microsoft says that some users are unable to access Outlook via "any connection methods."

The company has also confirmed that the outage has impacted connections made from the Outlook website, the Outlook apps for smartphones, and the Outlook app for computers. The outage impacts Microsoft's Outlook service for consumers, but not the Microsoft 365 service for enterprises.

Microsoft says it is working on resolving the outage
Photo Credit: Screenshot/ Microsoft

In order to tackle the ongoing Outlook outage, Microsoft says it is in the process of applying configuration changes and restarting components that were impacted due to the outage. It is also performing other validations, to check the configuration of authentication components related to the email service.