Technology
Microsoft tests fix for hours-long Outlook and Exchange Online outage
The service disruption affected email delivery, searches, and authentication on Monday, coinciding with separate issues for OpenAI's ChatGPT Work.
The short version
- Microsoft confirmed a widespread outage on Monday affecting its Exchange Online service, impacting Outlook users with email delays, search failures, and authentication errors.
- User reports began rising around 11:30 AM ET on Monday, with Downdetector recording thousands of complaints.
- Separately on Monday, OpenAI reported elevated errors and latency affecting its enterprise product, ChatGPT Work, though there were no reports linking the two incidents.
Key facts
- Microsoft confirmed that its Exchange Online service experienced degraded functionality on Monday, affecting cloud-hosted business email, calendar, and contacts.[TechCrunch]
- The Outlook outage caused message delays, authentication errors, search failures, and disruptions to mailbox workflows.[TechCrunch]
- User reports on Downdetector surged to over 5,000 reports by 2:00 PM ET on Monday.[TechCrunch]
- Microsoft identified the root cause as an issue with an authentication component and began testing a remediation strategy on a portion of its infrastructure.[TechCrunch]
- Separately, OpenAI reported that its enterprise agent, ChatGPT Work, experienced latency and increased error rates for approximately three hours on Monday.[CNBC]
What remains uncertain
- It remains unconfirmed whether Microsoft's testing of the authentication component fix has successfully resolved the outage globally.[TechCrunch]