Microsoft says Outlook, 365 outage may hit any region

Microsoft ↗ 0.67% said Thursday, Nov. 12, that it was investigating problems with Exchange Online mailboxes after a surge of users reported they could not reach Outlook. Microsoft 365 users reported problems at the same time. The company has not said when service will be restored. "We're investigating reports of users experiencing issues accessing Exchange Online mailboxes through multiple connection methods in the Americas," Microsoft's 365 status account posted, pointing administrators to incident EX1550543 in the admin center, according to NBC Chicago.nbcchicago.com

Microsoft later said the problem might not stay in one region. "While we're working to mitigate impact, we've confirmed the issue may affect Microsoft 365 service connectivity for users in any region," the company said, WHAS11 reported. It was not immediately clear how soon a fix would be deployed.whas11.com

Reports climb into the tens of thousands

Outage tracker Downdetector collects reports submitted by users, and the totals rose quickly. More than 22,000 error reports came in just before noon, with Chicago, Seattle and New York among the U.S. hot spots, NBC Chicago reported. Reuters reported that Outlook was down for more than 39,000 U.S. users, according to a flash headline carried by Moomoo. Later counts were higher. PIX11 said Outlook reports passed 80,000 by 1:10 p.m., and WHAS11 said they peaked above 100,000, with more than 15,000 more for Microsoft 365.pix11.com+3

Nearly half of the reported problems involved the Outlook website, and 24% involved the app, according to PIX11. Users said they could not log in or send and receive new emails, the Daily Mail reported. Downdetector also showed reports involving Microsoft 365, Copilot, Teams and OneDrive, and Microsoft's own status checker briefly went offline, GV Wire reported.gvwire.com+2

Users outside the Americas affected

The disruption also reached Britain. Problems there began just after 4 p.m. local time, and reports passed 5,000 by 5:40 p.m., Metro reported. The outlet said users were seeing a "Failed to fetch" error, which appears when a browser sends a request to a server and gets no reply.metro.co.uk

A difficult week for Outlook

The outage came days after Outlook users were told to update their software. Hackers had begun exploiting a flaw that could expose sign-in information when someone opened a specially crafted message file. Microsoft fixed the flaw in its Nov. 10 security updates, the Daily Mail reported. Microsoft has not linked Thursday's disruption to that patch, and it has not given a cause or an estimated time for full recovery.dailymail.com