Microsoft Outlook outage disrupts email services for thousands

Thousands of Microsoft Outlook users experienced significant disruptions to their email services on Monday, August 31, 2026, with widespread reports of failures in sending and receiving messages, accessing the web platform, and using the Outlook application. The outage, which began during the morning hours in North America, prompted Microsoft to acknowledge the issue and initiate recovery efforts. Problems were first reported on crowdsourced outage tracking websites around 8:30 a.m. Pacific Time, with user reports peaking at approximately 6,000 around 9:30 a.m.