Microsoft Outlook services are down across the world, leaving many users experiencing technical issues.
Web users have complained they are unable to access their email and that Outlook.com is failing to load.
The tech giant confirmed it was “actively investigating” the issue and that it was affecting people “worldwide”, especially those in India.
The website Downdetector, which tracks internet outages, said it received more than 4,000 incident reports of issues with Outlook, Office 365 and Microsoft Teams by 9am on Thursday morning.
Outlook email problems
The main problems being reported are login issues, server connection faults and issues with the Outlook website loading itself.
In an incident report on Thursday morning, Microsoft said: “Users may be unable to access their email. We’re collecting additional data from the affected infrastructure to aid in our investigation to determine the cause of impact.”
The Microsoft 365 service incidents team added: “We’ve received reports of users experiencing issues accessing their Exchange Online accounts via Outlook on the Web.
“Our initial investigation indicates that India-based users are the primarily impacted audience.”
We’ve collected additional data from the affected infrastructures to determine impact to our Exchange online protocols. Additionally, we’ve identified this issue to be affecting users worldwide. Further details can be found in your admin center under EX223208.
— Microsoft 365 Status (@MSFT365Status) October 1, 2020
A statement added: “We’ve identified this issue to be affecting users worldwide.
“We’re reviewing recent changes to our service to further determine the cause of impact. Users may experience problems with various Exchange Online protocols including Outlook desktop, mobile devices as well as those dependent on REST functionality.”
‘Keep it down until weekend?’
It is the second major Microsoft services outage in less than a week, after Microsoft Outlook, Office 365, Teams and other services were hit with technical issues for hours on Monday.
How long can we expect it to be down? I am trying to arrange a Coronavirus test so this is an important matter
— Duncan (@DuncanTilley) October 1, 2020
Many Outlook users took to Twitter to share their frustrations at seeing a white page with the message: “Something went wrong… sorry, we can’t get that information right now. Please try again later.”
Sharing a sarcastic GIF of a man dancing, one tweeted: “Oh how tragic, outlook is down and I can’t get into any of my emails…”
Oh how tragic, outlook is down and I can’t get into any of my emails… pic.twitter.com/UgUqIfy7aO
— Catherine Crompton (@cjcrompton) October 1, 2020
Another wrote: “Hey @Outlook , can you keep it down till the weekend please ?”
A third vented: “How long can we expect it to be down? I am trying to arrange a Coronavirus test so this is an important matter.”
