• by Ray Schultz , July 16, 2020

Microsoft apparently has resolved a service issue that hit Outlook users on Wednesday afternoon. 

The complaint level at downdetector fell from a high at 4 p.m. yesterday to a low flatline on Thursday.

One user tweeted: “Outlook went down for four hours Wednesday. What happened?” 

That person continues: “At mid-morning Wednesday in the U.S., Outlook stopped working. Dead in its tracks. Both the Click-to-Run version of Office (er, Microsoft) 365 and the installed (MSI) version of Outlook refused to start:“

On Wednesday, the company tweeted this comment: “We're investigating whether a recently deployed update could be the source of this issue. As a workaround, users can utilize Outlook on the web or their mobile clients. Additional details can be found in the admin center under EX218604 and OL218603."

Of the reports received by downdetector, 82% were for log-in issues, 12% for receiving and 4% for website. 

By evening, a complainant said: “Outlook out all day 7-15-2020. Started once this morning (7-16-2020), then quit. Will not reload. "

By evening, a user wrote that it “just started working for me....down since 11 a.m. EDT today.”

On Thursday, another reported a continuing problem.