Thousands of users faced disruptions while accessing Microsoft 365 services on Sunday, March 2, with many specifically reporting issues with Outlook emails. The outage, which impacted multiple Microsoft 365 features, led to a surge in complaints online.
Microsoft acknowledged the issue and confirmed that it was investigating the outage. “We’re investigating an issue in which users may be unable to access Outlook features and services. Additional details can be found under MO1020913 in the admin center,” Microsoft posted on X (formerly Twitter). The company stated that it was reviewing telemetry and customer-provided logs to determine the cause of the disruption.
Later, Microsoft identified a “potential cause” of the issue and took corrective action by rolling back a suspected code update. “We’ve identified a potential cause of impact and have reverted the suspected code to alleviate impact. We’re monitoring telemetry to confirm recovery,” the company said in an update.
By early Sunday morning, Microsoft reported that most affected services were recovering. “Our telemetry indicates that a majority of impacted services are recovering following our change. We’ll keep monitoring until impact has been resolved for all services,” the company stated.
At 4:35 a.m. on Sunday, Microsoft confirmed that the rollback of the service update had restored stability. “We’ve entered a period of extended monitoring to ensure that the service remains stable and to address any outstanding impact to other Microsoft 365 services,” the Microsoft 365 Service Status page noted.
According to Downdetector, a website that tracks online outages, nearly 37,000 users in the U.S. reported being unable to access Outlook during the peak of the disruption. While Microsoft has assured users that services are stabilizing, it continues to monitor the situation to prevent further impact.