Outlook down for hours: Microsoft names cause
A number of users complained on Saturday evening about not being able to access the Outlook mail application. Operator Microsoft has commented.
(Image: dennizn / Shutterstock)
Anyone who wanted to check their emails with the Microsoft Outlook application did not get very far on Sunday night: access was not possible. And other applications in the Microsoft 365 range were apparently also affected. There were soon thousands of reports on the "allestörungen" portal for network outages.
According to the reporting behavior there, the disruption lasted for around two hours on Saturday evening – from 21:30 to 23:30. The reports relate to Microsoft365 programs in general, including applications such as the collaboration software Microsoft Teams. However, user reports on social media focused primarily on the Outlook email client.
US users also affected
The problem was not limited to Germany. The problems were also reported in the US media and, according to CNBC, were increasingly observed in the metropolitan areas of New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. The broadcaster also refers to reporting portals for IT outages, which is why the number of reports is likely to be higher in metropolitan areas. According to CNBC, users also complained about outages in Teams and the Microsoft Exchange server software.
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In a post on X, Microsoft itself quickly spoke up and confirmed the problems, but only referred to Outlook. According to the post, many users were unable to access Outlook services and functions at the time.
As a result, the provider looked at various user logs and telemetry data, he said later. The cause was found around two hours later. Apparently, problematic code had been deployed during an update, which Microsoft successfully reversed. Around midnight German time, everything was working again.
The Outlook glitch has hit 365 users in hard times: Subscriptions to Microsoft 365 have recently been costing private users 30 percent more, in return for Copilot and AI image editing. There is an escape route for existing customers: they can switch to the Microsoft 365 Single Classic or Microsoft 365 Family Classic subscription models, which offer the old scope of services at the previous price.
(nen)
