Microsoft Outlook down: Global outages and login issues hit users

• Outlook appears to be restored after it went down for thousands of users globally, with outages spiking after 9am.
• Downdetector shows over a major spike in outages reported in the last hour.
• Users report crashes and login issues on X and Reddit, seeing an error screen.

Popular email service Outlook appears to have been restored after going down for tens of thousands of users around the world.

There was a huge spike in outages reported for the Microsoft-owned email service worldwide after 9am, according to Downdetector. It’s reported the issue also affected Microsoft 365.

More than 35,000 outages were reported at its peak at 10am, although numbers have since dropped to 9500 as of 10.50am.

Users around the world reported crashes on X and Reddit.

Some claimed they had been logged out and were unable to sign in.

“I think Microsoft Outlook has gone down? Anyone else been signed out of Outlook or Hotmail?” one person wrote on X.

“So I’m guessing Microsoft Outlook is having issues, everyone around me has just been logged out of their emails,” another said.

Affected users were shown an error screen when attempting to use the service.

The error message people receive when trying to login to Microsoft Outlook. Image - Screenshot

An official Microsoft X account confirmed it was experiencing an issue.

“We’re investigating an issue in which users may be unable to access Outlook features and services,” it said.

“Additional details can be found under MO1020913 in the admin center.”

We're investigating an issue in which users may be unable to access Outlook features and services. Additional details can be found under MO1020913 in the admin center.

— Microsoft 365 Status (@MSFT365Status) March 1, 2025

It subsequently said Microsoft has “identified a potential cause of impact” and “reverted the suspected code to alleviate impact”.

“We’re monitoring telemetry to confirm recovery,” it posted to X.

We've identified a potential cause of impact and have reverted the suspected code to alleviate impact. We’re monitoring telemetry to confirm recovery. Refer to MO1020913 for more detailed information.

— Microsoft 365 Status (@MSFT365Status) March 1, 2025

It comes after a major Microsoft outage last July wrought chaos around the world – grounding flights and knocking hospitals, GP surgeries, train services, banks, stock exchanges and TV channels offline.

Experts said it was the worst IT outage in history, with losses incurred by airlines and others predicted to have surpassed $1 billion at the time.

A faulty update with CrowdStrike’s cybersecurity software saw Windows suddenly shut down for millions of users across the world.

New Zealanders at the time spoke of queues at supermarkets due to checkouts going down and commuters being unable to tag on or tag off with Auckland Transport Hop cards.

Meanwhile, Australian shops were forced to go cash-only after digital checkouts stopped working and emergency service lines went down across the US.