Outlook Suffers Worldwide Disruption Affecting Email Accounts

Millions of Outlook users worldwide faced problems logging in, sending and receiving emails during a Microsoft disruption affecting both private accounts and Microsoft 365 customers.

Users also reported that mailboxes stopped synchronizing and the application froze. Microsoft confirmed the problems on its official status pages and identified the incident under the code EX1464935.

The company said the fault lay in the cloud infrastructure supporting Exchange Online. A failure in a central authentication and connection component prevented users from accessing mail servers normally. Microsoft said its technicians had begun countermeasures and were gradually deploying an update to affected servers.

Reports on outage-monitoring platforms such as Downdetector rose into the tens of thousands. IT experts advised users not to change local computer settings or reinstall the software because the problem was server-side. They also warned users against repeatedly sending emails that remained in their outboxes, which could lead to duplicate deliveries after service returns.