Is Outlook down? Users report Microsoft outage.

Updated on Thursday, Nov. 12 at 4:17 p.m. ET — In its latest update, Microsoft stated on X that it’s deploying fixes and some servers have already come back online. The company’s status page still listed Microsoft 365 service as “degraded.”

Updated on Thursday, Nov. 12 at 3:01 p.m. ET — The Microsoft 365 Status account on X shared updates explaining why the outage is happening and what they are doing to fix it.

Updated on Thursday, Nov. 12 at 2:20 p.m. ET — The Microsoft service status page is loading normally again, and a notification reads: “Users may be unable to connect to multiple Microsoft 365 services.”

The status page in question.
Credit: Screenshot: Microsoft

Updated on Thursday, Nov. 12 at 1:45 p.m. ET — Microsoft initially described the issue as primarily affecting mailboxes “in the Americas.” However, in an update posted to X, the company acknowledged other services and locations were also affected.

Thousands of Microsoft Outlook users reported an outage on Thursday afternoon, with user error reports for Microsoft products spiking sharply.

The platform DownDetector showed error reports spiking around 12:30 p.m. ET. By 1:12 p.m. ET, the service had received more than 130,000 reports, indicating serious problems with the popular email service. Virtually all Microsoft services showed elevated error reports, including Microsoft 365, Microsoft Copilot, and Microsoft Teams.

Credit: Screenshot courtesy of DownDetector

Mashable reached out to Microsoft for comment, and we’ll update this story if we receive more information.

From the beginning, there were signs of a widespread problem with Microsoft services. Case in point: The Microsoft service status page was not loading for Mashable reporters for part of the day, though it has since come back online.

The Microsoft 365 Status account on X initially posted a message acknowledging an outage at 12:54 p.m. ET: “We’re investigating reports of users experiencing issues accessing Exchange Online mailboxes through multiple connection methods in the Americas.”

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

At 1:07 p.m. ET, the company wrote, “While we’re working to mitigate impact, we’ve confirmed the issue may affect Microsoft 365 service connectivity for users in any region, more information will be provided in the Microsoft 365 admin center under EX1550543.” The company added, “a portion of infrastructure is experiencing elevated load across multiple regions, which is likely contributing to the connectivity errors.”

The company’s status page indicated that the outage specifically affects Microsoft 365, the company’s suite of tools for enterprise customers. Microsoft consumer products should still be operational.

Microsoft also clarified that users may have trouble accessing Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, Microsoft Copilot 365, and Microsoft Defender XDR, in particular.

In the latest updates, posted to X at 4:06 p.m. ET, Microsoft said it had started deploying a fix that would allow some servers to come back online. The company has also found “a small number of configuration updates” that may be part of the overall problem.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

Outlook previously experienced a widespread outage in August. At the time, the company cited a “misconfiguration issue that prevented authentication components from deploying correctly.

This is a developing story…