Microsoft Outlook outage today: Latest update, what caused email disruption and what users should do

Those experiencing difficulties accessing Outlook on Thursday need to first establish whether it is an issue with Microsoft’s servers or with their own account. Microsoft uses its official status site and Microsoft 365 Admin Center for service health information. For more information about the Exchange Online incident, administrators should look for incident EX1550543.

Here are three ways users can check the situation:

• Microsoft service status: Visit Microsoft 365 Service Health for official information about service disruptions and recovery updates.
• Downdetector: Check Outlook outage reports to see whether other users are reporting similar problems.
• Microsoft 365 Admin Center: Organisations can check incident EX1550543 for information about the Exchange Online connectivity issue.

There is also an option of trying to access Outlook using another approach, such as toggling between the desktop version and the web version of Outlook. Checking the internet connection and restarting the application can also help in case the issue is related to the user's side.


However, changing passwords and reinstalling Outlook or changing account settings will not solve an infrastructure problem.

Those who are waiting to send important messages for work can use other methods of communication for the time being.

Microsoft's efforts to bring the unavailable servers back online and stabilise its remaining infrastructure are central to resolving the disruption. Users should continue monitoring official service updates for confirmation that Outlook and other affected Microsoft 365 applications have returned to normal.

In addition, it is necessary for users to make sure that there are no emails in their outbox or sent folder prior to trying to resend them, especially when they are not sure about the delivery of the previous one.

At the moment, Microsoft's measures to redistribute traffic and recover from the infrastructure problem are essential for overcoming the disruption.

Microsoft Outlook outage: What happened and why did users face email problems?

Thursday's outage was related to connectivity problems involving Exchange Online, the cloud infrastructure that powers Outlook's email services. Microsoft initially confirmed that users in the Americas were experiencing difficulties accessing their mailboxes through multiple connection methods.

The company initially identified elevated workloads across different regions of its infrastructure as a possible contributor to the connectivity errors. However, its subsequent investigation provided a clearer explanation of what had happened.

Microsoft clarified that the elevated workload was not caused by an overall increase in user traffic.

Instead, a large number of servers had unexpectedly become unavailable, shifting additional demand onto the remaining infrastructure and putting it under pressure.

In its latest update, the company said it was investigating why the servers had become unavailable while working to safely bring them back into service.

Microsoft also directed users to incident references EX1550543 and MO1550821 in the Microsoft 365 Admin Center, as well as its official service-status website, for further information.


The outage received considerable attention on Downdetector. Reuters reported that more than 130,000 Outlook-related problem reports had been recorded by 1:27 p.m. Eastern Time.

AP also reported more than 46,000 complaints involving Microsoft 365 and approximately 3,000 reports concerning Microsoft Teams.

The disruption was not limited to Outlook. Other services, including SharePoint Online, Microsoft Copilot 365 and Microsoft Defender XDR, were also identified as potentially affected. However, this does not mean that all users experienced difficulties across every application.

As part of its recovery efforts, Microsoft had already redistributed connection traffic across its worldwide infrastructure and moved additional traffic away from affected systems to reduce the pressure. The company was also restarting affected servers and investigating the reasons behind their unexpected unavailability.

The latest clarification shifts the focus of the investigation towards server availability and infrastructure reliability, rather than unusually high user demand.

Microsoft has not yet publicly identified the underlying reason why the servers became unavailable in the update.