Thousands of users were unable to read or send emails on Saturday afternoon due to an outage affecting Microsoft Outlook. Microsoft later confirmed in an update that it had identified a potential cause of the problem after Downdetector, a service that tracks tech outages, began receiving outage reports around 3:30 p.m. ET. By 4 p.m. ET, over 32,000 outage reports or related issues had been submitted. The outage also impacted other Microsoft programs, with Downdetector receiving about 25,000 reports concerning Microsoft 365, which includes Outlook, Word, Excel, and other applications. Smaller numbers of reports came in for issues with the Microsoft Store and Microsoft Azure, the company’s cloud computing platform. “We’ve identified a potential cause of impact and have reverted the suspected code to alleviate impact,” the Microsoft 365 Status account posted on X just after 5 p.m. ET. “We’re monitoring telemetry to confirm recovery.” USA TODAY journalists began receiving emails again shortly after 4:30 p.m. ET. With email services down, users turned to social media to express their concerns. “If anyone is panicking about Microsoft 365, specifically Outlook being down, do not worry. It is not just you,” one user posted. — news from USA TODAY
