Microsoft Outlook experiencing widespread outage

Microsoft's Outlook email service is currently facing an outage, preventing users from accessing their inboxes. Initially affecting the U.S. and the Americas, the issue has since been expanded to impact "any region." Microsoft has not specified the exact cause of the outage but has indicated that it is providing updates through its admin center, which was not accessible at the time of this report.

In a post on X, Microsoft mentioned that some of its infrastructure was experiencing "elevated load" and is redistributing connection traffic across its broader global infrastructure to alleviate the strain. This situation follows Microsoft's major incident in September, which caused a prolonged outage affecting its Microsoft 365 productivity suite, including Outlook.

The issue was attributed to a "core authentication configuration" problem that halted user access. It remains uncertain to what extent the current outage extends to other Microsoft services. TechCrunch will seek comment from Microsoft once the email service is restored.