Microsoft down updates: millions of users left unable to access Outlook in ‘global outage’

A MAJOR outage left Microsoft Outlook users unable to access their Emails but some services have recovered.
Thousands of user complained on social media about the outages, including Downdetector, a popular outage tracking website, which showed a massive spike in reports starting around 9pm UK Time (4pm EST) on Saturday.
The outages also affected Microsoft 365, Teams, Exchange, and the Microsoft Store.
Microsoft has since said “a majority” of its Outlook services are back to normal.
The company said it had “identified a potential cause of impact” at about 10pm as it's services started to recover in the hours after that.
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Microsoft says ‘majority’ of hit services recovering after outage
The giant revealed that many of its services have started to go back to normal
Microsoft said it had “identified a potential cause of impact” at about 10pm.
Most of the affected Microsoft 365 services have since started to work as expected.
Microsoft said in a post on X: “Our telemetry indicates that a majority of impacted services are recovering following our change.
“We’ll keep monitoring until impact has been resolved for all services.”
Outage comes after Skype shutdown
Today’s outage comes just a day after Microsoft announced they were shutting down Skype.
In an announcement on X, they said: “Starting in May 2025, Skype will no longer be available. Over the coming days you can sign in to Microsoft Teams Free with your Skype account to stay connected with all your chats and contacts. Thank you for being part of Skype.”
Users report being logged out of accounts
A number of users on social media have complained that they had been logged out of their Microsoft accounts and were unable to sign back in.
Microsoft haven’t changed service status yet
According to the Microsoft service health page, “everything is up and running.”
Despite this there are still reports of difficulties accessing the services worldwide.
Previous outages reported in November
This isn't the first time there have been reports of outages on Microsoft services.
The company also suffered an outage affecting its emails and Teams app in November.
Microsoft investigating outage affecting Outlook services
Microsoft have announced on X that they are looking into problem with it's Outlook app after thousands of reports.
The post read: “We’re investigating an issue in which users may be unable to access Outlook features and services.”
A follow-up post shortly afterwards read: “We’re reviewing available telemetry and customer-provided logs to understand the impact.
“We’ve confirmed this issue is impacting various Microsoft 365 services.”Services up and running according to Microsoft admin page
According to the , all of their apps are currently up and running
Reports of issues with Microsoft apps rising in the US
Across the United States, reports suggest users are unable to use Microsoft services.
No official comment from Microsoft yet
Despite the thousands of reports, there hasn't been any comment from Microsoft on the outages.
Users have reported that even when refreshing the page the services aren't working.
Users unable to access Microsoft accounts
Over 8,000 users have reported issues with Microsoft services on Down Detector.