Here are the key points from the July 10, 2025 Microsoft Outlook outage as reported by Metro and confirmed by forum and news analysis:
- Outage Scope: Nearly 200 outage reports were logged starting around 5 a.m., likely impacting thousands of Microsoft 365/Outlook users as the workday began.
- Main Error: Users faced messages saying their "license is not valid" even although their subscription payments were up-to-date.
- Email Failure: Both sending and receiving of Exchange emails failed across different email clients, not just Outlook but Gmail as well (when connecting to Exchange accounts).
- Possible Cause: This appears to be a licensing/system error—potentially similar to previous incidents in early 2025, where a backend Microsoft licensing glitch caused active Microsoft 365 accounts to appear expired or unlicensed.
- Known Issue Pattern: Earlier in 2025, Microsoft 365 Family customers were also randomly deactivated due to a Microsoft-side error and Microsoft’s advice was to restart apps and browsers after the fix was implemented.
- Wider Impact: These licensing issues have occurred a few times in 2025 and are part of ongoing reliability challenges for Microsoft 365 cloud services.
- This is a Microsoft system-side/back-end issue—there is nothing wrong with your payment or your account setup.
- The best action is to wait for an official Microsoft update. Watch the Microsoft 365 Service Health Dashboard or the official Microsoft 365 Status Twitter/X account for real-time updates.
- When Microsoft resolves the licensing issue, you may need to restart your Outlook app, sign out and back in, or clear your browser cache if using web mail.
Let me know if you want specific troubleshooting steps, historic details, or direct links to Microsoft’s service status updates.
Source: Metro.co.uk Microsoft Outlook goes down with users unable to access emails
