A widespread Microsoft outage on March 1 left tens of 1000’s of customers unable to entry key providers, together with Outlook, Groups, and Workplace 365, for greater than three hours. Microsoft has not offered full particulars on the basis trigger however attributed the disruption to a “problematic code change.”
Timeline of the Microsoft outage
In keeping with Downdetector, studies of points started rising on March 1 round 3:30 p.m. ET. Greater than 37,000 complaints have been logged for Outlook, 24,000 for Workplace 365, and 150 for Groups. Nearly all of studies originated in U.S. cities, together with New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, although social media posts indicated the outage had a worldwide attain.
Pissed off customers turned to social media, with many initially fearing that they had been hacked. “I believed I used to be getting my outlook hacked, seems your entire Microsoft platform is getting hacked. Thank God it’s not private,” one consumer posted on X.
Microsoft acknowledged the difficulty in a put up on March 1at 4:34 p.m. ET by way of its Microsoft 365 Standing account, stating: “We’re investigating a difficulty during which customers could also be unable to entry Outlook options and providers.”
SEE: Microsoft Patches Two Actively Exploited Zero-Day Flaws
Nevertheless, the outage affected extra than simply Outlook; Workplace 365 functions corresponding to Phrase, Excel, Groups, and Change have been additionally impacted. In a follow-up X put up, Microsoft confirmed that “varied Microsoft 365 providers” have been down and that engineers have been analyzing telemetry and customer-provided logs.
At about 5:00 p.m. ET on March 1, Microsoft confirmed it had recognized a possible explanation for influence, and virtually an hour later reported that providers have been recovering. The corporate confirmed at 7:02 p.m. ET that service had been restored after “reversion of the problematic code change” and to “confer with MO1020913 within the admin middle for detailed data.”
Customers categorical frustration as companies face potential losses
Regardless of the repair, some customers continued to report points. At 1:46 a.m. ET on March 3, the “Standing Is Down” X account reported ongoing Outlook and Workplace 365 disruptions.
One affected buyer posted on X on March 3 that Microsoft “ought to be ashamed of themselves” and that the continued issues are “probably costing companies tens of millions of {dollars}.”
The corporate’s service standing web page exhibits all services as operational on the time of writing.
Microsoft has but to launch an in depth report on the newest outages. TechRepublic has contacted Microsoft about the reason for the preliminary outage and for added details about any ongoing points; there was no reply on the time of writing.
Different outages that disrupted enterprise operations
Microsoft is, sadly, no stranger to outages. In November 2024, Microsoft Groups skilled technical delays for over 24 hours, and since then there have been points with Copilot, Multi-Issue Authentication, SharePoint, and OneDrive.
In July 2024, a distributed-denial-of-service assault prompted international points with Azure cloud service. Nevertheless, none of those come wherever near the dimensions of the CrowdStrike incident that very same month, which disabled about 8.5 million Home windows gadgets worldwide and prompted big disruption to emergency providers, airports, regulation enforcement, and different important organisations.
Slack’s current outage
Microsoft 365 providers have been additionally not the one ones going through issues this week. On Feb. 26, Slack skilled a significant outage, disrupting providers like messaging and workflows for 1000’s of customers worldwide. This was brought on by upkeep motion in a database system which led to an “overload of heavy visitors.”