Having trouble accessing your Microsoft Outlook email?
You’re likely not alone.
Microsoft 365 confirmed just before noon Thursday that it had received reports from users who were experiencing issues accessing their Exchange Online mailboxes “through multiple connection methods in the Americas.”
The website DownDetector indicated a large spike in people reporting errors with Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft 365 just before noon.
Reports peaked at just over 130,000 people experiencing issues with Outlook around 12:20 p.m., with Chicago, Seattle and New York among the hot spots in the U.S. By 3 p.m., reports had significantly dipped but more than 56,000 users were still reporting issues.
Reports of issues with Microsoft 365 followed a similar trend, with reports peaking at just above 45,000 around 12:25 p.m., and dropping to roughly 19,700 by 3 p.m.
In subsequent posts on social media, Microsoft said it determined that the issues were happening in part because a “portion of infrastructure is experiencing elevated load across multiple regions,” and that the company was “redistributing connection traffic across our broader worldwide infrastructure to help balance the load.”
Microsoft also said it was “aggressively pursuing all pathways to reduce impact.”
Some servers were able to be restored after the company “validated an alternative service health check method, which allowed a subset of affected servers to successfully return to service” — a change Microsoft said around 3 p.m. they were applying more broadly.
Check back for more on this developing story.
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