A widespread outage of Microsoft services left tens of thousands of users unable to access their emails and essential applications on Saturday afternoon, causing frustration and operational disruptions across various sectors. Reports of the issue began surfacing around 3:30 p.m. ET, quickly escalating to a peak of over 37,000 complaints by 4:00 p.m., according to DownDetector, a platform that tracks service outages.
Microsoft 365, which includes widely used productivity tools such as Outlook, Excel, and PowerPoint, acknowledged the problem through a post on X (formerly Twitter) at 5:01 p.m. ET. The company stated that it had “identified a potential cause of impact and have reverted the suspected code to alleviate impact.” While initial reports suggested that the outage was primarily affecting Outlook, Microsoft later confirmed that the disruption extended to multiple Microsoft 365 services.
The outage also appeared to have affected Xbox services, another division under Microsoft’s umbrella. Users took to social media to voice their frustrations, reporting login failures and connectivity issues. Additionally, authentication services, including Microsoft’s Authenticator app, were reportedly experiencing difficulties, preventing users from accessing their accounts securely.
Despite the scale of the incident, Microsoft did not provide an immediate response to inquiries from media outlets, including CNN. The company has not yet disclosed the specific technical details behind the outage, nor has it confirmed whether the issue stemmed from a software update, a security breach, or an internal infrastructure failure.
This disruption follows a series of similar technical failures that have plagued Microsoft services in recent years. Users have been experiencing intermittent issues with Outlook for weeks, and past outages in 2023 and 2024 have demonstrated the challenges Microsoft faces in maintaining the reliability of its cloud-based services. Notably, on November 26, Microsoft Teams and Outlook were rendered inaccessible for over 24 hours before services were fully restored.
As Microsoft continues to monitor and work on stabilizing its systems, businesses and individual users who rely on its services remain on high alert, hoping for a more resilient infrastructure to prevent further disruptions.
