Microsoft 365 was down for numerous users on Thursday. At the time of writing, over 8,000 users faced issues with Outlook, as per Downdetector. The site that aggregates reports on outages also showed that there were problems with Microsoft Store and Defender. At the time of writing over 900 people faced problems with Microsoft Store while over 300 appeared to face troubles with Defender.
Microsoft logo can be seen in this photo. (Bloomberg)
In case of Outlook, a majority of complaints were centered around not receiving messages, as per Downdetector. People complained in the comment section of the page, as troubles continued.
One person wrote “cannot logo in to email.” Another said they were facing the following problem.
“451+4.3.2+Temporary+server+error.+Please+try+again+later+ATTR2+. Started about 1:05pm CST,” they wrote. Meanwhile Downdetector noted that most users began to report issues from 2:21 PM EST.
Many people took their complains to X as well.
“There is an unreported Microsoft Office 365/Exchange Online issue right now.. Emails are going out slowly, Nothing incoming. Down Detector showing massive spike in issues the last hour. No word from Microsoft yet,” one person wrote. Another added, “Looks like Microsoft365 just started experiencing issues w/ email delivery & other services. Emails getting deferred on connection & delayed.”
Yet another person said, “I have issues with my Microsoft accounts and outlook right now, also my web apps on my desktop, is this the same for you guys?”.
Microsoft provides update on outage
The company issued a statement as numerous people complained about the problems.
“We’re investigating a potential issue impacting multiple Microsoft 365 services, including Outlook, Microsoft Defender and Microsoft Purview. Further information can be found in the admin center under MO1221364,” they said on X.
They added, “We’ve identified a portion of service infrastructure in North America that is not processing traffic as expected. We’re working to restore the infrastructure to a healthy state to achieve recovery.”
On January 21 Microsoft faced troubles as well with complains coming in about Outlook and Teams. At the time, they had said that a possible third-party networking issue was impacting services.
“Our investigation indicates a possible third-party networking issue may be affecting access to Microsoft 365 services, including Teams and Outlook for some users,” they had said. After a quick fix, Microsoft had added, “Access issues for Microsoft 365 services, including Teams and Outlook, have been resolved. We’ve determined that the Microsoft service environment remained healthy, and that the incident was related to a third-party network issue.”