Microsoft Outlook Users Locked Out Amid Service Disruption
Tens of thousands of Microsoft Outlook users experienced a significant lockout from their accounts due to an extensive service disruption that escalated early on Sunday, peaking around 2.30 am.
The tech giant confirmed the resolution of the issue and stated that it was investigating the underlying problem.
Reports regarding Outlook began to emerge late Saturday, affecting upwards of 37,000 users, as indicated by DownDetector. Despite the widespread nature of the problem, Microsoft’s service status page appeared to show no indications of issues at that time.
The disruption extended beyond Outlook alone. Microsoft acknowledged that other services within the Microsoft 365 ecosystem, such as Excel, PowerPoint, Teams, and Azure, were also affected. In a statement, Microsoft 365 noted, “We’ve identified a potential cause of impact and have reverted the suspected code to alleviate impact.” The company is actively monitoring the recovery efforts.
In addition to Microsoft 365 services, users encountered difficulties with Xbox services, which are also under Microsoft’s ownership. Many users took to social media to voice their frustrations, with some questioning the reliability of Microsoft’s service status pages when they do not reflect existing outages, stating that it seems pointless to have such pages when many are tweeting about Outlook being down.
By early Sunday, Microsoft announced on X that the troublesome code believed to be causing the service disruption had been reverted to mitigate the impact. They are currently analysing telemetry and customer logs to gain a comprehensive understanding of the problem’s extent and to ensure all services are fully restored. “Our telemetry indicates that a majority of impacted services are recovering following our change. We’ll keep monitoring until the impact has been resolved for all services,” the company stated.
“We’re reviewing available telemetry and customer-provided logs to understand the impact. We’ve confirmed this issue is impacting various Microsoft 365 services. Refer to MO1020913 for more detailed information.”
— Microsoft 365 Status (@MSFT365Status) March 1, 2025
This recent outage adds to a series of issues faced by Microsoft Outlook in recent weeks. Over the past two years, the tech giant has dealt with significant global outages, including a major incident in November 2024, where both Outlook and Teams services were inoperable for more than 24 hours.
The outage has sparked renewed discussions on social media, with users sharing their experiences. One user remarked that they thought their Outlook account had been hacked, only to find out that the entire Microsoft platform was experiencing issues. Thankful it wasn’t a personal attack, they shared their relief. Another user mentioned changing their password three times before they discovered on X that Outlook was down and expressed their frustration towards Microsoft.
Microsoft’s ongoing review is focused on fully resolving these service issues to prevent similar occurrences in the future. As the company continues to work towards restoring full functionality, users are encouraged to stay informed through official channels for the latest updates.