Islamabad, Mar 2, 2025: Thousands of Microsoft Outlook users across the globe were unexpectedly locked out of their accounts late Saturday night due to a sudden disruption. The technology corporation swiftly identified the issue and implemented corrective measures to restore access.
In a series of updates on X, Microsoft 365, which manages Outlook, Excel, PowerPoint, and Teams, acknowledged the problem and assured users that an investigation was underway.
“We have pinpointed a potential source of the disruption and have reversed the suspected code change to mitigate its effects,” Microsoft stated.
Additionally, the company confirmed that it was analyzing available system telemetry and reviewing user-submitted reports to gauge the full extent of the issue.
“Our system diagnostics indicate that most impacted services are now recovering following the implemented changes. We will continue to monitor the situation until all services are fully operational,” the company added.
Widespread Disruption
According to DownDetector, a service that tracks outages, the disruption impacted multiple Microsoft services, including Outlook, Exchange, Teams, Microsoft 365, and Azure. Reports of access issues began surfacing around 2 AM (IST) on Sunday.
During the peak of the outage, over 37,000 users reported being unable to access Outlook, while approximately 24,000 faced login issues with Microsoft 365. Additionally, around 150 users confirmed difficulties accessing Microsoft Teams.
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While Microsoft has not disclosed specific details about what triggered the outage, such service disruptions have become a frequent occurrence in recent months.
Recurring Technical Failures
Microsoft has encountered multiple large-scale service interruptions over the years. In both 2023 and 2024, the company suffered widespread global outages, some of which took hours to resolve.
The latest major outage occurred on November 26, 2024, when Outlook and Teams services remained inaccessible for more than 24 hours before being fully restored.
As Microsoft continues to enhance its infrastructure, users are hopeful for more stability in its cloud-based services moving forward.
