Microsoft users are facing widespread issues with Outlook and other Microsoft 365 services as the company investigates problems with Exchange Online.
When did the outage begin?
According to outage-tracking website Downdetector, reports of issues with Microsoft Outlook began coming in around 12:15 p.m. EDT on Monday.
Thousands of users have reported being unable to send or receive emails, access their inboxes or log in to Outlook. Reports have come from across the United States, including Virginia, Texas, Alabama, New York, New Jersey and Michigan.
As of 3:15 p.m. EDT, the services continued to experience problems, with thousands of users still reporting outages.
One user reported, “Teams, SharePoint, Exchange and other items are having issues. Multiple clients down.”
Another wrote, “We are seeing Outlook signing issues here. Some clients are reporting not recieving emails.”
A third user added, “Multiple users in different states reporting 365 email connection issues.”
Another added, “Several of us in our small office are unable to send/receive emails in Outlook and webmail is unreachable.”
One more user wrote, “Can’t send or receive any emails at our business since this morning.”
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Microsoft responds
Microsoft has acknowledged an issue with Exchange Online and said it is investigating the cause.
In an earlier update on X, Microsoft said, “We’ve identified an issue with an authentication component which is contributing to impact. 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.”
In a follow-up update, Microsoft said, “We’re continuing to fine-tune our remediation strategy as our internal tests progress. Additionally, we’ve confirmed that the authentication component issue impacts other services beyond Exchange Online. For more information regarding other impact scenarios, please see: MO1465074. As Exchange Online remains our most predominantly impacted service, we’re also continuing to provide updates via EX1464935.”
It remains unclear when Outlook and the other affected Microsoft 365 services will be fully restored.
