Microsoft’s major Outlook outage could continue into the evening as the company works to restore services after widespread disruption left Australians struggling to access email and other Microsoft 365 tools.
The outage began at about 3am Australian time. Microsoft’s latest update points to progress, but not a full fix: the company said it was seeing “positive results for server stability” after applying a patch to part of its infrastructure.
That’s an improvement on its earlier description of “marginal success” — welcome news for anyone repeatedly refreshing their inbox, though there’s still a wait ahead.
Microsoft says recovery work is continuing
Microsoft said the patch targets an upstream authentication and routing configuration component. It is monitoring the results and working to expand the change to servers supporting regions coming back online.
In other words, the company has seen encouraging signs in part of its network, but services are still being restored in stages. Microsoft has not yet said that the wider disruption is over.
The company said it expects to provide another update in about an hour. Users can also check the Microsoft 365 service health page for official service notices.
SharePoint users may also have trouble sharing files
The disruption is not limited to getting into Outlook. Microsoft has also flagged problems for SharePoint users trying to share online files with people outside their organisation.
That may affect teams working with clients, suppliers or other external contacts, even if some Microsoft services begin to return. If a file share fails, it may be part of the wider incident rather than a problem with the recipient’s access settings.
What should users do while they wait?
For now, keep an eye on Microsoft’s service updates and avoid repeatedly changing account settings or resending the same message. If you have an urgent deadline, use an available alternative communication method and check with colleagues before assuming a message or file has been delivered.
We’ll continue to follow Microsoft’s updates as the recovery effort progresses. For Australian coverage of the disruption, see ABC News’ report on the outage.
