Thousands of users were left stranded on Wednesday morning as Microsoft 365 suffered a major outage, locking many out of their Outlook email accounts and disrupting daily work activities.
The issue, which began around 5 a.m., triggered over 200 outage reports globally. Affected users said they were suddenly logged out of their accounts, with error messages stating that their Microsoft licence was invalid, despite being up to date on payments.
One user wrote online: “It seems that a bunch of accounts have been caught in a system error that shows no payment details available. Currently, no Exchange emails are being sent or received, whether through Outlook or Gmail.”
Another added: “Everything seems to be down, Microsoft, EE, YouTube, literally everything.”
This comes just days after Microsoft issued a notice that its popular Authenticator app would stop supporting password storage and autofill, a feature used by millions. The app, commonly used for two-factor authentication, will now focus solely on passwordless login systems such as facial recognition and device approval.
Microsoft 365 confirmed the outage on its official service status account and said investigations are ongoing. As of the time of filing this report, no official resolution time had been provided.