Microsoft Outlook users experienced an outage on November 25, 2024. Users of the popular email application noticed it was down in the morning, and the company has not provided an update on when it will be restored yet. This isn’t the first time that Microsoft suffered from a widespread outage; a similar incident happened just two months prior.
Get all the updates on Outlook’s issues today, below.
Why Is Outlook Down Today?
Microsoft has not provided an explanation behind Outlook’s apparent outage. However, Outlook’s official X account replied to customers via social media with updates. In response to one user, Outlook tweeted, “Hello, we’ve started to deploy a fix which is currently progressing through the affected environment. While this progresses, we’re beginning manual restarts on a subset of machines that are in an unhealthy state.”
Hello, we've started to deploy a fix which is currently progressing through the affected environment. While this progresses, we’re beginning manual restarts on a subset of machines that are in an unhealthy state. For more information, please refer to MO941162 in the admin center.
— Microsoft Outlook (@Outlook) November 25, 2024
As a result of the outage, Outlook users were met with a “service unavailable” banner whenever they tried to refresh their email accounts.
In response to another X user, Outlook tweeted that “the fix has reached approximately 90 percent of the affected environments and our targeted restarts continue to progress.”
What Happened With Microsoft 365 in September 2024?
On September 12, Excel, Teams, Outlook and Word users all went down for more than 20,000 users, who complained about the outage at around 8 a.m. ET, per Downdetector. The issue came two months after the infamous CrowdStrike situation, which resulted from a faulty software update.
“We’re investigating an issue where users may be unable to access multiple Microsoft 365 services,” the company wrote via X (previously known as Twitter). “Please look for MO888473 in the admin center for more details and further updates.”
Microsoft took to X throughout the morning to provide updates to all users. In one tweet, the company explained why the outage had taken place.
“We’ve confirmed that a change within a third-party ISP’s managed-environment resulted in impact,” one update read via X. “The ISP has reverted the change and we’re now seeing signs of recovery.”
Did Microsoft Outlook Shut Down in September?
According to USA Today, Microsoft Outlook experienced the most outages. The publication noted that 75 percent of the outage reports were about the Outlook email app, while 17 percent of the reports involved server connections.
Was Microsoft Restored in September?
Later that day, Microsoft updated its users that they “experienced a brief disruption connecting to some Microsoft services on our network” and that “the issue has been resolved and connections are operating normally.”
“We’ve monitored our systems and confirmed that impact has been remediated,” the company tweeted in a separate post at about 11 a.m. ET.
Amid the chaotic outage, Microsoft also experienced a setback in employment. According to Variety, the company was planning to lay off 3 percent of its global team, specifically its Call of Duty: Warzone Mobile video game staff.