MICROSOFT Outlook and a slew of other services have come to a grinding halt, leaving millions of users around the globe unable to access their emails.
The company is facing a widespread outage that has affected not just Outlook, but also Microsoft 365, Teams, Exchange, and the Microsoft Store.
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Social media has exploded with complaints as users report being locked out of their accounts.
One person wrote on social media: “So I’m guessing Microsoft Outlook is having issues, everyone around me has just been logged out of their emails.”
According to service status website Down Detector, users began reporting problems with the tech giant’s services at around 8.40pm on Saturday.
Almost 9,000 reports had been received by 9.15pm, with the issue particularly affecting users in London and Manchester, according to the website.
Microsoft has said it is investigating the issue.
The company wrote on X:“We’re investigating an issue in which users may be unable to access Outlook features and services.”
In a follow-up post shortly afterwards, it added: “We’re reviewing available telemetry and customer-provided logs to understand the impact.
“We’ve confirmed this issue is impacting various Microsoft 365 services.”
The global outage has echoes of last year’s massive disruption when cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike suffered a major outage.
It also crippled access to essential services, sparking outrage from users.
That incident raised questions about cloud service vulnerabilities and how tech giants can handle multiple simultaneous outages.
With Microsoft facing its own service collapse, the tech world is bracing for answers as users are left in limbo.
Microsoft is far from the only tech giant to experience problems this week.
On Friday, Meta faced its own major outage, leaving millions of users unable to access WhatsApp, Facebook, and Instagram.
The issues began around 3:10pm UK time and spread across the UK and US, causing widespread disruption.
According to Down Detector, more than 60,000 users reported problems with WhatsApp alone.
Users struggled to send and receive messages on WhatsApp, while Facebook app users across the UK also reported issues.
Meta managed to resolve the problem around 3.50pm.
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