Massive outage strikes Microsoft 365, leaving thousands of users impacted

As reported by Mint, Downdetector.com reported on Monday that Microsoft’s product suite, which includes popular applications like Word and Excel, experienced a significant outage, affecting over 15,000 users. This incident marks at least the third outage Microsoft services have encountered since the beginning of the year.

Specifically, Microsoft Outlook, a widely used email platform relied upon by numerous companies for smooth operations, was also affected by outage issues, as reported by Downdetector. Most reports indicated problems with Outlook, prompting frustrated users to convey their experiences on social media, with many expressing their inability to sign into or load their email accounts.

We’ve identified downstream impact for Microsoft Teams, SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business. We’re providing full impact details and updates for those services via MO571683. Updates pertaining to Exchange and Outlook on the web will continue to be provided via EX571516.

— Microsoft 365 Status (@MSFT365Status) June 5, 2023

Addressing the situation, Microsoft acknowledged the issue through its Microsoft 365 Status account on Twitter, stating that they were actively investigating the problem with accessing Outlook on the web. Furthermore, they discovered a “downstream impact” on other services, such as Microsoft Teams, SharePoint Online, and OneDrive for Business.

However, the company later updated that it had successfully rolled back an update, improving service. They eventually confirmed that the impacted services had recovered.

This isn’t the first time such incidents have occurred. In February of the same year, Downdetector.com recorded over 2,000 incidents where people reported issues with Outlook, indicating that this has been a recurring problem for the platform.

The duplicate contact issue is still not completely resolved

As of the latest information on Microsoft’s service status page, both Outlook and Teams are still experiencing a duplicate contact list problem, initially reported on March 28.

The next update regarding this issue is scheduled for July 28.

Microsoft has stated that this problem is affecting users who synchronized their personal account device contacts with Microsoft Teams. However, they have implemented a long-term solution, and new synchronizations no longer result in duplicate contacts.

The company is working to complete a full cleanup process and apply it to the affected environment. They aim to have this process concluded by the end of August.