Users Face Widespread Service Disruptions
Microsoft Outage Exchange Online users faced significant disruptions as an outage prevented access to Outlook on the web. Reports from thousands of users on DownDetector indicated that the issue began impacting Microsoft’s services early in the day, leading to login failures, website access issues, and server connection problems.
Microsoft acknowledged the problem, stating that it was investigating a potential issue affecting users attempting to access Outlook on the web. The company later identified a specific portion of code causing errors and worked on rolling back a recent code change to restore functionality.
The outage, which was tagged as a critical service issue under EX1036356 in the Microsoft 365 Admin Center, left affected users seeing “Something went wrong” error messages when trying to log in. While Microsoft Outage did not immediately provide details on which regions were impacted, the issue appeared to be widespread, causing frustration among users relying on Exchange Online for communication and work-related tasks.
Additional Issues Plague Exchange Online
Alongside the main outage, Microsoft was also investigating a separate issue (EX1035922) stemming from a faulty update that prevented some users from conducting searches in Outlook on the web and the new Outlook client. Users attempting to search for emails received error messages such as, “We didn’t find anything, try a different keyword.”
As a temporary solution, Microsoft suggested that users refine their searches by applying filters, such as selecting “Inbox” under folder names along with a keyword. This workaround helped some users retrieve search results while Microsoft worked on a permanent fix.
Adding to the complications, Microsoft had been addressing a week-long Exchange Online outage that led to delays and failures in sending and receiving emails. Initially tracked under EX1027675 and later reassigned to EX1030895, this issue resulted in a small subset of messages failing with Non-Delivery Report (NDR) errors and calendar invites appearing as plain text with winmail.dat attachments.
Microsoft Works to Restore Services
Microsoft Outage has faced a series of outages in recent weeks, including a major Microsoft 365 disruption two weeks ago that affected Outlook and Exchange Online authentication. Additionally, a separate Microsoft 365 issue led to call failures for Teams customers.
As of March 19, 15:37 EDT, Microsoft reported that service health was improving after rolling back the faulty update. The company confirmed that reverting the problematic code change had resolved the issue for all affected users.
In an update shared on the Microsoft 365 Admin Center, Microsoft explained that a recent configuration change, intended to enhance browser content policies within Outlook on the web, inadvertently introduced a code regression that led to the outage. Following the rollback, Microsoft verified the resolution through customer feedback and internal service health monitoring.
While the outage has been resolved, the incident highlights ongoing challenges with Microsoft’s cloud-based services, raising concerns among users about reliability and system stability. Microsoft Outage assured users that it would continue monitoring the situation to ensure no further disruptions occur.
