Thousands of Microsoft 365 users faced unexpected disruptions on Saturday as key services, including Outlook, experienced outages. The issue left many unable to access their emails, sparking frustration among businesses and individuals relying on Microsoft’s cloud-based services.
Microsoft Responds to the Outage
Microsoft acknowledged the issue in a series of updates on X (formerly Twitter), where its official incident response page provided real-time updates. The company stated that it was actively investigating the cause of the disruption and working on a fix.
A few hours later, Microsoft announced that it had identified a possible cause and rolled back the suspected code responsible for the outage. The company expressed optimism that the fix would restore access to affected services.
“We’ve identified a potential cause of impact and have reverted the suspected code to alleviate impact,” Microsoft shared in one of its posts.
Services Begin to Recover
As the company worked on a solution, reports of service restoration began trickling in. By the afternoon, Microsoft reported that most affected users were seeing improvements and regaining access to their accounts.
“Our tracking indicates that a majority of impacted services are recovering following our change,” Microsoft confirmed.
Despite this, some users continued to face sporadic access issues, particularly with Outlook. Microsoft assured users that full functionality would be restored soon.
Users Report Widespread Issues
The outage was first noticed when users took to social media, complaining about their inability to send or receive emails. Many also reported problems accessing other Microsoft 365 services.
Downdetector, a website that tracks online service disruptions, recorded thousands of outage reports, with a peak around 4 p.m. EST. As Microsoft implemented its fixes, the number of reported issues gradually declined, signaling that services were coming back online.
Not the Only Tech Outage This Week
This incident follows another major outage earlier in the week when Slack, a widely used workplace communication platform, went down for thousands of users. The repeated disruptions highlight the growing dependency on cloud-based productivity tools and the chaos that can ensue when these services face technical failures.
What’s Next?
While Microsoft has managed to restore most of its services, this outage raises questions about reliability and the need for improved fail-safes. With businesses and individuals relying heavily on digital tools, even short-term disruptions can have significant impacts.
Have you experienced issues with Microsoft 365 or Outlook today? Share your thoughts in the comments!
