Here’s a summary of what we know so far about the Microsoft Outlook outage, based on the Forbes report:
What’s Happening?
- Users are reporting they can’t access Outlook, Outlook.live, or Hotmail services.
- Affected users are encountering a “500 Internal Server Error” when trying to connect to:
- microsoft.com/microsoft-365
- outlook.com
- outlook.live.com
- hotmail.com (and variants with local domains)
- The outage has been ongoing since 18:30 ET, May 14, 2025.
- As of now, the official cause is unknown.
- The outage is not confirmed to be a cybersecurity attack, and current speculation suggests it might be due to technical issues such as failed updates or DNS issues.
- Microsoft’s Office Service Portal simply states, "We're having issues, but we're working on it," confirming a widespread problem.
- Microsoft recommends trying the following alternate links while the fix is being deployed:
- Microsoft 365: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365
- Outlook: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/outlook
- Microsoft aims to have a fix in place by 11:30 ET, May 15.
- The outage is still ongoing as of the time of this summary, with Microsoft actively working on a solution.
- Users should watch for further updates from Microsoft or check the Office Service Portal (Service Status) for status changes.
Source: Forbes Microsoft Outlook Outage — What We Know So Far
