Microsoft Outlook Hit by Exchange Online Service Outage - CNET
PT, Outlook was still having issues. Microsoft reported on its status page around 6 a.m. Still facing issues with Microsoft Outlook or other services related to Microsoft Exchange Online?
Outlook users faced a frustrating start to the work week thanks to an issue with Microsoft Exchange Online.
To the dismay of workers everywhere (wink, wink), Microsoft Outlook kicked off the work week with a major outage that left thousands unable to use the email service.
Downdetector, which tracks outages and problems for online platforms, showed a large spike in reports of problems with Outlook starting around 8 a.m. PT on Monday, peaking at more than 6,000 reports at 8:17 a.m. Now, the issue appears to be mostly resolved, as Downdetector shows fewer than 550 reports at 6 a.m. PT on Tuesday.
A Microsoft representative told CNET the company is looking into the reports.
Microsoft Outlook had a bad day on Monday, thanks to problems with Microsoft Exchange Online, which Outlook uses for mailbox access and email delivery. On Tuesday, some people were still reporting issues.
A Microsoft representative did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The site Downdetector tracked reports of Outlook problems on Monday and Tuesday.
“Report volume spiked hard from around 11.20 a.m. ET, running to well over 130,000 user reports across the day, against a normal Monday total in the low thousands, so this was roughly two orders of magnitude above baseline,” Luke Kehoe, lead industry analyst for Downdetector parent group Ookla, told CNET in an email on Tuesday.
“The bulk of (the error reports) landed in the first few hours and stayed elevated through the evening before tailing off overnight,” Kehoe said. “Reports were spread fairly evenly across receiving mail, sending mail, login and the app and website, which points to a broad backend issue rather than something isolated to one feature.”
By Tuesday at 1 p.m. PT, Outlook was still having issues. One Downdetector user wrote that they were still unable to search messages, were being required to reload the program multiple times, and noted that Outlook was frequently freezing up.
“Just acting kind of slow here in Iowa,” another user wrote. “Can’t send messages on first try (but they go on the second attempt), can’t load messages on first try. Like it’s choking on bandwidth or something. Happens to everything, including simple, text-only messages.”
As workers log on to their Microsoft products on Tuesday morning, a few may still experience hiccups. While yesterday’s outage appears mostly resolved, Downdetector still shows reported issues with Microsoft Outlook. There were fewer than 550 reports at 6 a.m. PT and fewer than 460 reports at 6:30 a.m. PT on Tuesday.
Microsoft reported on its status page around 6 a.m. PT that “service telemetry continues to indicate recovery” and that the root cause was an issue with authentication configurations used by different Microsoft 365 services. “As recovery signals continue to trend positively, we’re maintaining extended monitoring across affected service workflows to ensure improvements are sustained,” Microsoft’s status page said.
Still facing issues with Microsoft Outlook or other services related to Microsoft Exchange Online? The company is aware, and is still working on a fix.
“We’re aware of an issue affecting access to Exchange Online and some other services,” a Microsoft spokesperson told CNET in an email on Monday afternoon. “We know this is disruptive for customers and we appreciate their patience while we work to restore services as quickly as possible. Updates are available on the Microsoft service health status page and @MSFT365Status.”
At 3:50 p.m., that status page offered some information, but no estimated time for a complete fix.
“We’re reexamining recent changes made to the service to determine why the authentication components aren’t being deployed as expected,” the update read in part. “Additionally, we are exploring every avenue to safely restore the components, including reverting an update the affected infrastructure recently received. We’re performing additional tests to determine whether this will provide relief.”
Thousands of users have reported problems with Microsoft services, including Outlook, beginning Monday morning. At 3:25 p.m. PT, Downdetector shows over 2700 reports of problems.
Users were reporting a variety of issues, and many were unable to receive messages and access the app and website.
We’re continuing to follow the outage and will share updates as they develop.
If you’re still wrestling with Microsoft Outlook, you’re not alone. The problems that began around 8 am PT on Monday are continuing into the afternoon. Microsoft is continuing to post updates about the issue, which involves Microsoft Exchange Online and is preventing many people from using the popular Outlook program.
“We’re continuing to fine-tune our remediation strategy as our internal tests progress,” Microsoft posted to its Microsoft 365 Status account on X around 12:30 p.m. PT. “Additionally, we’ve confirmed that the authentication component issue impacts other services beyond Exchange Online.”
A Microsoft representative told CNET earlier on Monday that the company was looking into the issues.
Problems seem to affect users in various ways. One Reddit user reported that problems hit accounts in their office at different times.
“Mixed results in office,” another Reddit user wrote. “Some of us completely down, some working fine.”
The errors seemed to evolve and change over time for some.
“Started earlier not getting my verification emails, now I get (an) error code when opening either app or browser,” one Reddit user wrote.
At 1:27 p.m. PT, more than 4,000 people had reported problems to Downdetector. That number is slightly below the 6,000 reporting issues at 8:17 a.m. PT.
The official Microsoft 365 Status account on X posted about the problem.
“We’ve identified an issue with an authentication component which is contributing to impact,” the message reads. “To address this, we’ve developed a remediation strategy, and we’re applying it to a portion of infrastructure to test its efficacy. Once we’ve confirmed this resolves impact, we’ll apply the solution more broadly. For more information, please see EX1464935 in the admin center.”
This means that Microsoft has officially opened an incident investigation for Exchange Online, and EX1464935 is the incident number. Many people will be affected via Outlook, because Outlook relies on Exchange Online for mailbox access and email delivery.
According to Downdetector, 37% of people reporting problems faced issues with receiving messages, 23% had trouble using the app and 20% reported issues with the website.
“Can’t even open the site, when I could, I couldn’t search or anything,” wrote one Reddit user.