A widespread outage struck major tech services over the weekend, affecting a significant number of Microsoft 365 customers. The disruption primarily impacted services such as Outlook, prompting numerous users to report issues with accessing their accounts. Microsoft acknowledged the problem and reassured users that they were investigating the cause and working to resolve it. Through posts on the X social platform, the company informed users that they had identified a potential source of the problem and had taken steps to mitigate its impact by reverting suspected code changes. A dedicated page for addressing incidents related to Microsoft’s office software programs provided updates on the situation, indicating that most affected services were gradually recovering following the corrective measures.
As the afternoon progressed, Microsoft’s monitoring data suggested a positive trend in the restoration of services, offering hope to users experiencing disruptions. Earlier in the day, frustrated individuals took to social media to voice their inability to log into their Outlook email accounts, highlighting the widespread nature of the outage. The outage was also reflected in data from Downdetector, a platform that tracks service disruptions, which recorded thousands of reports from affected users. Reports of outages related to Microsoft 365, particularly affecting Outlook, peaked around 4 p.m. Eastern Standard Time before showing signs of improvement. Some relieved users began confirming that their access had been restored as the situation gradually improved.
This incident came on the heels of another disruption earlier in the week when the communication platform Slack faced its own outage, impacting thousands of users and rendering the service temporarily unusable.
