Microsoft working to fix Outlook issue preventing users from sending or receiving emails

Update 02/10/25 – 10:00 am (IST): The company has confirmed that the issue has been resolved, and Outlook and OneDrive are now fully operational. The information was shared via a post on X and on the official status page.

However, some users are reporting that they’re still facing issues with Outlook.

Feel free to drop a comment below to let us know if you’re also affected despite Microsoft claiming that a fix is live.

Update 01/10/25 – 02:29 pm (IST): Microsoft has provided an update on the ongoing disruption, stating that the issue is now affecting not only Outlook but also the OneDrive service, with the latest status page update. The current status is as follows:

Service availability continues to improve steadily, and the backlog of messages is being processed. We’re actively monitoring service telemetry to ensure a complete recovery.

Original article published on October 1, 2025, follows:

Microsoft is scrambling to fix a major Outlook problem that’s left both personal and business users unable to send or receive emails since late Monday evening. The company finally confirmed the issue on X after users spent hours trying to troubleshoot what they thought were local connection problems.

The email service went down a few hours ago, catching people off guard when test messages to themselves never showed up in their inboxes. Many took to social media to vent about trying “1000 different fixes” before Microsoft even acknowledged something was wrong.

According to Microsoft’s status page, the culprit is a “degraded subset of service infrastructure” that’s affecting mailbox connectivity across all connection methods. The company says they’ve rerouted traffic away from the affected infrastructure and are monitoring things closely, but users are still reporting spotty service. The incident has been assigned the reference number EX1162980 and is being tracked on Microsoft’s service health dashboard.

The company even posted about the disruption on X through the @MSFT365Status account.

Some users in the comments are wondering if messages will eventually be received or if they will be lost forever. Others reported being able to log in but emails take over two hours to show up. Meanwhile, some others claim they couldn’t connect to the service at all.

The error messages vary from “Something went wrong” to “Server not found.”

This isn’t the first time Outlook has experienced major disruptions this year, with a 19-hour outage back in July affecting millions of users worldwide. That said, since there’s no ETA for a fix, we’ll just have to wait and see when Microsoft shares the next update.