• by Ray Schultz , July 31, 2019

Email service Microsoft Outlook suffered an outage on Tuesday, largely affecting users’ ability to log in and potentially affecting email marketing response. 

The issue appears to have been resolved, and Outlook  users in the U.S. say they have regained access. But complaints still came in to downdetector from Africa and other locations early this morning and last evening.

The problem started yesterday at 4:48 p.m. ET, when complaints peaked on downdetector. 

The outage largely affected Outlook or Hotmail accounts in Europe and the Northeastern U.S., judging by the downdetector map. Minor outages also appear to have hit Florida and southern California. 

Microsoft reported on its customer service site on Wednesday that everything is up and running.

However, it acknowledged that “users may have experienced sign-in failures or repeated credential prompts.” 

It continued, “We’ve complete our mitigation action and have confirmed that the incident is resolved.” The end time of the investigation was 10:24 p.m. on Tuesday. 

Microsoft states that it rerouted traffic.

One Outlook user suggested that the incident may have been due to a breach, but there was no sign of that at deadline.

Another wrote, “Is there an outage with outlook at the moment? Loads of people, inc myself unable to log in. Keeps asking for password then saying there's an error.”