Microsoft Outlook users around the world faced widespread disruption on Thursday, as thousands reported issues accessing their emails. The service outage began early in the day, with peak reports coming in from the U.S., Europe, and parts of Asia. The majority of users cited problems logging in, delayed email delivery, and syncing errors across devices.

Downdetector Confirms Surge in Complaints

According to Downdetector, a website that tracks real-time user issues with online services, over 45,000 reports were logged within a few hours of the incident. Most complaints involved Outlook’s desktop and mobile applications, with some users also experiencing issues with other Microsoft 365 services, including Teams and OneDrive.

Microsoft Acknowledges Service Disruption

Microsoft issued a brief statement via its official status page and X (formerly Twitter), confirming that engineers were investigating the root cause. “We’re aware of an issue affecting Outlook and are working to identify the cause,” the company posted. No timeline has been provided yet for full restoration of services.

Business Operations Affected Globally

The outage significantly impacted businesses that rely on Outlook for communication and scheduling. Several IT firms and financial institutions reported temporary workflow disruptions, prompting them to switch to backup communication platforms. Users expressed their frustration on social media, with #OutlookDown trending globally.

Previous Outages Raise Concerns Over Reliability

This incident marks the second major disruption of Microsoft’s email services in the last three months, raising renewed concerns about the reliability of cloud-based enterprise tools. Experts are calling for better redundancy systems and faster communication from Microsoft during such outages.