Microsoft Outlook email service hit by new outage

Microsoft has reported that its Outlook email service is currently suffering from an outage, which is stopping users from gaining entry to their inboxes. The problem was first identified as impacting the U.S. and the Americas, but it subsequently widened to involve “any region.”

Although Microsoft has not provided a precise cause for the disruption, the firm stated it was offering updates via its admin center, which was not reachable when this was published. In a message posted on X for those unable to access the admin center, Microsoft said some of its infrastructure was facing “elevated load,” and that it was “redistributing connection traffic across our broader worldwide infrastructure to help balance the load.”

The company’s most recent major incident occurred in September, resulting in a days-long outage of its online productivity suite, Microsoft 365, which includes Outlook. During that period, Microsoft blamed a “core authentication configuration,” which prevented users from accessing the service. It remains unclear how far the current outage extends to other services.