Microsoft Outlook Goes Down Worldwide as Company Investigates Cause
Microsoft Outlook has been down since early Thursday afternoon, leaving users worldwide unable to reach their email through the web and apps. Microsoft says elevated load in part of its infrastructure is behind the problem, and the company is still investigating the cause.
Microsoft Outlook has been down since about 1 p.m. Eastern time on Thursday, leaving users around the world unable to access their email through the web and desktop and mobile apps. The disruption has hit business communications across many sectors, with enterprise users among those locked out of their inboxes.
The Microsoft 365 Status account acknowledged the problem and said it was caused by elevated load in part of the company's infrastructure. That load was elevated across multiple regions, which led to connectivity errors for people trying to reach their mail. Microsoft has also said the outage may affect its wider Microsoft 365 business suite, and the company has not yet confirmed a root cause for the failure.
Thousands of users reported problems, according to NBC News, and the errors were not limited to Outlook. Some users also reported issues with Microsoft Teams, although those reports were less widespread than the complaints about email. Users described errors across several Microsoft applications, which pointed to a problem affecting shared services rather than a single program.
Microsoft posted a string of social media updates throughout Thursday as it worked on the problem. Ben Hope, the company's communications director, also commented on the outage. The company has not said when service will be fully restored, and the investigation into what caused the load to spike is still under way.
Deadline, NBC News and The New York Times all covered the disruption as it unfolded. The outage comes at a time when many organizations depend on Microsoft 365 for day-to-day communication, so a failure of this kind quickly affects workplaces that rely on email to run meetings, share documents and coordinate work across teams.
Source: theverge.com
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