Outlook, the Microsoft email application, has suffered a global outage on Monday, with thousands of users complaining of sign-in issues that prevented customers from accessing their mailboxes. According to the internet outage monitoring service Downdetector,more than 1000 formal reports have been made with 68% of users stating that they were unable to log in.
In the UK alone, more than 800 users, along with around 400 others elsewhere, reported difficulties accessing their email services. The main issue has been the inability to log in, accounting for 64 per cent of all reported complaints. Some users have also reported problems receiving messages.
How did Outlook respond?
Responding to the outage, the company stated that affected users were being signed out of their accounts and witnessing too many ‘errors’. “Some users may experience intermittent sign-in failures, including ‘too many requests’ errors or unexpected sign-outs,” Microsoft said in a recent update on the company’s service health status page.
What caused Outlook outage?
“Our investigation indicates client sign-in scenarios may be contributing to the reported behaviour, and we’re focused on validating interactions across service components to identify next steps.”
Which Microsoft services are facing problems?
According to the Service Health Status page, Outlook is currently experiencing issues. The company said users may face problems accessing Outlook.com.
Microsoft listed the issue under consumer products and described it as a service degradation affecting products designed for families, individuals and students.
The company stated: users may experience issues accessing Outlook.com.
Did Microsoft Copilot also suffer an outage recently?
Last week, Microsoft Copilot also went down.
“We’re investigating a potential issue that’s affecting Microsoft Copilot for personal use. We’re reviewing available data and will provide additional updates on the Service Health Status page,” the company said at the time.
It later confirmed that “Microsoft Copilot for personal use is remediated” following prolonged monitoring.
Meanwhile, earlier this year in January, Microsoft 365 services were hit, with major problems reported with Microsoft Outlook.
Users reported that they were seeing the ‘451 4.3.2 Temporary server error’ message.
Which services were affected?
The list of affected apps and services included:
- Outlook
- Microsoft Defender
- Microsoft Purview
- Microsoft Teams
- Microsoft Azure
Microsoft, reacting to the outage, had said on X: “We’re investigating a potential issue impacting multiple Microsoft 365 services, including Outlook, Microsoft Defender and Microsoft Purview. Further information can be found in the admin center under MO1221364.”
In a follow-up post, it added: “We’ve identified a portion of service infrastructure in North America that is not processing traffic as expected. We’re working to restore the infrastructure to a healthy state to achieve recovery. More information can be found at [https://status.cloud.microsoft](https://status.cloud.microsoft) or under MO1221364 if accessible.”
