Thousands of Microsoft 365 users encountered service disruptions on Sunday, March 2, with many specifically reporting problems accessing Outlook email. This outage, which affected multiple Microsoft 365 features, triggered a spike in online complaints.
Microsoft acknowledged the issue and swiftly began an investigation. “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,” the company posted on X (formerly Twitter). Microsoft initiated a review of telemetry data and customer logs to pinpoint the source of the disruption.
Later, the company identified a “potential cause” and took corrective action, 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,” Microsoft reported in an update.
By early Sunday morning, Microsoft reported that the majority of impacted services were recovering. “Our telemetry indicates that a majority of impacted services are recovering following our change,” the company announced. “We’ll keep monitoring until impact has been resolved for all services.”
At 4:35 a.m. on Sunday, Microsoft confirmed that the rollback of the service update had restored stability. The Microsoft 365 Service Status page noted, “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.”
According to Downdetector, a site that monitors online outages, nearly 37,000 users in the U.S. reported problems accessing Outlook at the peak of the disruption. While services are stabilizing, Microsoft continues to monitor the situation to prevent any further impact.
