On the morning of July 10, 2025, Microsoft 365 users worldwide encountered significant disruptions, particularly with Outlook, as they found themselves unable to access emails or log into their accounts. Reports began surfacing around 5:00 AM BST, with outage monitoring service Down Detector recording over 200 incidents by 8:30 AM. The majority of these reports (54%) pertained to Outlook, followed by login issues.
Users attempting to access their emails were met with error messages such as "something went wrong," indicating a widespread authentication failure. Microsoft promptly acknowledged the issue on their official X (formerly Twitter) account, stating, "We've determined the cause of the issue and have deployed a fix. We're closely monitoring its deployment and expect the issue to gradually resolve as deployment progresses."
This incident is the latest in a series of outages affecting Microsoft 365 services over the past year. Notably, on March 1, 2025, a global outage impacted Outlook, Microsoft 365, and other services, preventing millions from accessing their emails and collaboration tools. The disruption was attributed to a buggy update in Microsoft's caching infrastructure, which led to authentication failures. (messageware.com)
Similarly, on June 17, 2025, users experienced disruptions across core Microsoft 365 applications, including Teams and Exchange Online. This outage was traced back to an overly aggressive traffic management update that unintentionally rerouted and choked legitimate service traffic. Microsoft swiftly rolled back the faulty code to restore normal operations. (greyhoundresearch.com)
The recurrence of such outages raises concerns about the reliability of cloud-based services and the robustness of Microsoft's update deployment processes. While the company has been quick to address and resolve these issues, the frequency of disruptions underscores the need for more stringent testing and validation procedures before rolling out updates to critical infrastructure.
For users, these outages highlight the importance of having contingency plans in place, such as alternative communication channels or backup systems, to mitigate the impact of service disruptions. As cloud services become increasingly integral to daily operations, both providers and consumers must prioritize resilience and preparedness to navigate potential challenges effectively.
Source: The Scotsman Microsoft down: Outlook goes down with users unable to access emails
