Microsoft has issued an update to thousands of customers following a major Outlook outage last night (March 1).
The tech giant has said “a majority” of its Outlook services that users were unable to access are now recovering.
Microsoft investigated an issue on Saturday that caused an outage to users of “various Microsoft 365 services”.
According to service status website Downdetector, users began reporting problems with services at about 8.40pm.
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More than 9,000 reports had been received by 9.15pm, and the issue particularly affected users in London and Manchester, according to the website.
Nearly half of the reports had problems trying to "log in".
Microsoft said in a post on X: “Our telemetry indicates that a majority of impacted services are recovering following our change.
“We’ll keep monitoring until impact has been resolved for all services.”
It said it had “identified a potential cause of impact” at about 10pm.
The company later added: "Following our reversion of the problematic code change, we’ve monitored service telemetry and worked with previously impacted users to confirm that service is restored."
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
Were you affected by the Microsoft Outlook outage? Let us know in the comments below.
What is Downdetector?
Downdetector is an online website that allows users of popular services including X (Twitter), Instagram, Facebook, Virgin Media and more to report if they are having trouble with the services.
The site only reports an incident when the number of problem reports is significantly higher than the typical volume for that time of day.
Describing itself on its website, Downdetector is “where people go when services don’t work.”
The website monitors disruptions to various key services including the internet, web hosting platforms, banks, social media and more.
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You can see the full methodology and learn more about how Downdetector collects status information and detects problems via its website.
In short, users can get involved by submitting any issue reports on the platform.
Problem indicators are also collected from social media and other factors on the web, Downdetector explained.
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These reports are then validated and analysed in real-time.
An incident is then detected if the number of reports is significantly higher than the typical average for that particular service.
When a user goes to investigate the issue, they can see what the most reported problems are currently and check if their areas are in one of the outage hotspots.
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