Something is seriously wrong with Microsoft Outlook and other popular Microsoft services like Teams, Microsoft 365, Copilot and others, as more than 100,000 users are flocking to the popular outage-reporting website Downdetector to report issues. That number has dropped a bit since then, but it’s still a very widespread outage.
For its part, Microsoft has posted on X to its Microsoft 365 Status account about the issue and what it’s doing to get things back in order. I eventually got the Microsoft 365 status page to load, and it’s been keeping us updated on the latest issues.
Microsoft Outlook outage
A massive number of reports
As of this post, Microsoft Outlook is sitting at more about 119,000 reports on Downdetector, which is a bit down from the peak of 130,000 but still a staggeringly large number of people having an issue with the productivity service.
Microsoft is working on it
Microsoft is aware of the issue and working on it. The company took to X to update users that it’s “working to mitigate impact” and has “confirmed the issue may affect Microsoft 365 service connectivity for users in any region.”
It didn’t provide an updated time for when everything would be back to normal, but hopefully it can get things sorted quickly so emails and calendar alerts can start going again.
That’s a lot of Microsoft
While Outlook is getting the most attention in terms of raw reports, it’s actually the whole of Microsoft 365 that’s having problems, so other services are also experiencing outages that are impacting users, just not at the same scale as Outlook.
The cause
Microsoft appears to have found the cause, as it posted on X saying that “We’ve determined a portion of infrastructure is experiencing elevated load across multiple regions, which is likely contributing to the connectivity errors.” It quickly followed up with another post saying, “We’ve begun redistributing connection traffic across our broader worldwide infrastructure to help balance the load.”
It sounds like the company might have a solution to the problem, though I have to assume that redistributing that much traffic will take some time, so it might be a while before everything is working flawlessly.
Below 100,000
Downdetector reports have dropped below 100,000 for Outlook, which likely means that some of Microsoft’s traffic-redistribution methods are working for at least some percentage of users.
Still can’t access status page
While user reports are dropping, I personally still can’t access the status page for Microsoft, so I’m forced to turn to X for the latest news (which isn’t always as quick as going straight to the had the same result
Of course, we’ll continue to monitor both the status page and X for the latest information. When the status page does start working again, that’s probably a good sign.
Status page loaded
I decided to just leave the status page loading in the background without refreshing or anything. After about 5 minutes, I went back to the tab and saw that it finally loaded (probably took extra time due to whatever techniques Microsoft is using to re-route traffic).
Is this a sign that the outage is almost over? Maybe, but according to the now-loading status page, things are still very much not over.
“Completed redistributing connection traffic across our worldwide infrastructure”
Digging a little deeper into Microsoft’s status page, we can see that the company says it has “completed redistributing connection traffic across our worldwide infrastructure, and we’re moving additional traffic off the affected infrastructure to further reduce load.” That sounds like a big step in the right direction for getting things back in working order.
“We’re also restarting affected servers to return them to service. In parallel, we’re investigating whether the elevated traffic reflects a genuine increase in requests or a shift in how traffic is being routed across our infrastructure,” the status update continues.
We’ll see if things start to come back to normal for Outlook and other Microsoft users (officially, Microsoft lists Exchange Online, Microsoft Teams,SharePoint Online, Microsoft Copilot 365 and Microsoft Defender XDR as affected services).
Downdetector check in
Downdetector reports are staying fairly steady with around 88,000 reports. That’s about 10,000 down from the peak, but still a fairly high number.
Microsoft status update
“We’re aggressively pursuing all pathways to reduce impact. As a precaution, we’ve paused all deployments and configuration changes while we review recent changes for any correlation to this event. We’ve determined that the elevated load isn’t driven by an overall increase in traffic, but by a large number of servers being unexpectedly unavailable, which is shifting load onto the remaining infrastructure. We’re investigating what’s causing these servers to become unavailable while we work to safely return them to service,” reads the latest update on Microsoft’s status page.
Microsoft seems to have found the cause
“We determined the elevated load isn’t driven by an increase in traffic, but by a number of servers being unexpectedly unavailable; straining the remaining infrastructure. We’re working to safely return them to service,” the company posted on X.
If Microsoft is able to get these servers up and running soon, we could be seeing this outage come to an end. Of course, it could take some time or end up being something else causing problems.
Slowly dropping
Reports have hit the 77,000 range recently, which is a sizable drop from the peak. It’s still one of the bigger outage numbers we’ve seen in recent months, so we’re by no means out of the woods yet, but between slightly lower reports and Microsoft having a strong idea of what went wrong, we could be in good shape.
Microsoft with another solution
“We’re testing a configuration change to address a problem that’s causing servers to fail automated health checks and become unavailable. In parallel, we’ve initiated a restart of all affected servers and are monitoring health as they return to service,” the company posted on X and to its status page.
Early poll results
So far, 99% of the people who’ve voted in the poll above are experiencing issues with Outlook. Given that it has thousands of votes in that direction, I think it’s pretty clear we aren’t done with this outage yet.
Users on Downdetector weigh in
Finding useful messages in the Downdetector comments section is challenging, to say the least. When these outages happen, users tend to use the comments as a message board of sorts where they let out all kinds of random thoughts. This one is no exception.
However, some users are reporting actual statuses and information if you’re willing to dig through all the memes and jokes. For example, the users in the screenshot above are currently dealing with issues in California, which isn’t surprising since it seems to be hitting everywhere.
Microsoft jumped on its 365 Status X account with another update, this time it said, “We’ve not identified any recent change correlated with the start of impact; however, our investigation indicates the failed health checks may originate from a specific component that’s responsible for processing server health. We’ve taken steps to prevent additional servers from being impacted while we work to return the affected servers to service.”
It sounds like it’s doing what it can to mitigate the damage caused by the servers being down, but it doesn’t have a solution to bring the affected one back online yet.
Reddit with the hot takes
As usual, Reddit users have some funny takes on the outage. Not many of them are particularly helpful, but if you’re looking for some entertainment while you can’t get things done, it might be worth checking out this thread and having a laugh.
Of course, if you have your own witty comments, you’re welcome to scroll down this page and leave a comment here; we read them all!
Microsoft status page update
“While we haven’t identified any recent changes that correlate with the start of impact, our investigation indicates the failed health checks may originate from a specific component on the affected servers that’s responsible for processing them. We’re deploying a targeted change to bypass this component on a subset of servers to validate whether this restores availability, and we’ve taken steps to prevent additional servers from being removed from service while we work to return the affected servers to service. We’re also investigating why affected servers are experiencing elevated processor usage while handling requests.”
Things are staying pretty steady on Downdetector
Lately, we haven’t seen any significant drops in Downdetector reports. Currently, reports are at 61,000, and they’ve been gradually dropping. Usually, when something is fixed during an outage, we see a sharp drop in the number of reports; a gradual decline likely indicates that people just aren’t reporting as much as when the outage first started.
Updates are fast and furious from Microsoft
Microsoft posted another update on its status page and it seems like things are moving forward but with some issues.
“While validating the targeted change, we found that many of the affected servers have become unresponsive, which is preventing us from confirming whether the change is effective. We’re restarting these servers so they can come back online with the change in place, and we’re applying the same approach to additional affected portions of our infrastructure to validate the results more broadly,” reads the status page.
The hottest Outlook takes come from… Wendy’s
Wendy’s X account sure is something to behold. The fast-food brand is dropping some hilarious takes about the outage in its replies to users, including a timely reference to it being down because “that guy cheated on his wife.”
Users are still reporting issues
As of 3:50 pm ET today, Downdetector shows 59595 reports. Although this is down from the peak of over 130K reports four hours ago, it is still a significant number.
Microsoft continues working on a solution
The problem isn’t just related to Outlook, as Teams, Copilot, Defender XDR and more Microsoft services are affected. Some users have also reported being unable to access their OneDrive storage or Office online. Microsoft is restarting its servers with a fix in place, the company says.
Latest update from Microsoft
Here is the latest update from Microsoft’s Office 365 status page:
“We’ve validated an alternative health check method on a subset of affected infrastructure, which allowed the servers in that subset to successfully return to service, and we’re now applying this change more broadly. We’re also preparing an automated recovery process to continually detect and restart unresponsive servers, to help keep them in service while this change progresses. Additionally, our review of recent changes has identified a small number of configuration updates that we’re investigating as potential contributors to the issue.”
Not just Outlook
As those affected by today’s Microsoft Outlook outage look for alternatives, users are now reporting problems at Gmail, Zoom and even Yahoo Mail on Downdetector. Meanwhile, the actual Outlook outage appears to be winding down at 4:45pm ET today as Microsoft has restarted the affected servers. At the time of writing though, there are still 50,000+ reports of users having problems with Outlook. So we’re not in the clear yet…..
Not the longest outage by far
Having Microsoft Outlook go down during the middle of a workday is never fun for anyone. However, today’s outage is far from the worst one the service has experienced yet.
Back in July of last year, Outlook was down for 19 to 21 hours worldwide and then in August of this year, it took 67 hours for Microsoft to fully fix the issue behind that outage.
Hopefully Outlook returns to normal operations before the start of the workday tomorrow.
Reports are declining (but there’s still issues)
I don’t think we’re out of the woods just yet, but it’s a good sign that reports are declining on Downdetector. As of 5:41 pm ET the number was just over 37,000. Some users are reporting that Outlook is back up.
Preparing for the next outage
As of right now at 5:38pm ET, the number of users reporting issues with Outlook on Downdetector is declining. However, there are still over 30,000 reports of problems with the service.
Since Microsoft Outlook outages tend to happen several times a year or more, once it’s fully restored, you might want to consider exporting your contacts to a CSV file. That way, when the next outage happens, you can switch to a different email provider in the meantime.
Now this won’t help if you need to login to Outlook just to user your work account. In Outlook itself, you can export your contacts by going to Open & Export and then Import/Export. Select Export to a file, then Comma Separated Values (CSV) and click next. After selecting your contacts and hitting Finish, all of your Outlook contacts will be available as a separate file you can import into Gmail, Yahoo Mail, etc.
Winding down but not over yet
Today’s Outlook outage does appear to be winding down with the issue being at least partially resolved for some. However, there are still almost 30,000 reports on Downdetector at the time of writing at 7:12pm ET. We’re going to stay on top of this to let you know once Outlook is fully back up and running.
Limiting traffic
According to a post on X from Microsoft, the company is warning users that the servers that led to today’s outage “can become unresponsive again once they receive traffic.” For this reason, Microsoft is “limiting which types of traffic can reach affected infrastructure in some locations” which explains why we’re still seeing around 30,000 reports of issues with Outlook on Downdetector.~~~
Still a lot of reports
This has been a very long outage, and it’s still going, with more than 25,000 reports on Downdetector. While we’re far away from where it was when it peaked, we’re clearly still not out of the situation fully.
We’ll keep you updated as the outage develops, whether it’s Microsoft fixing everything fully or the issues continuing.
