Microsoft has acknowledged a service degradation affecting Outlook.com, with users experiencing difficulties accessing the platform since April 27, 2026. The issue has been confirmed by Microsoft's official Microsoft 365 Status account, which has been providing updates on the situation. Users have reported intermittent failures to load their inboxes, delays in email delivery, and complete inability to access the webmail interface, affecting multiple regions globally.
This outage is part of a broader pattern of instability within Microsoft 365 services that has persisted throughout early 2026. Earlier in the year, a significant disruption in January impacted multiple services including Outlook, Microsoft Teams, Defender, and SharePoint. The current issue has been classified as a 'Service Degradation', indicating that while core functionality is impaired, the service is not entirely offline.
A related issue has been identified with Outlook Classic, specifically involving the Microsoft Teams Meeting Add-in. This was triggered by an incompatible legacy Outlook build version that remains active in certain user environments. Microsoft has confirmed that a fix is being deployed and is expected to be completed by April 28, 2026.
To mitigate the impact, Microsoft has advised affected users to follow specific steps published in the admin center's More Info section. These steps are intended to serve as a temporary workaround until the broader fix is fully implemented. Temporary version restrictions placed on some users will be lifted once the deployment is complete.
Organizations that rely on Outlook.com for critical communications are advised to implement contingency email procedures until full service restoration is confirmed. Users and administrators can monitor live service health updates at status.cloud.microsoft or through the Microsoft 365 admin center under Health > Service Health. Keeping abreast of these updates will help manage the impact of the ongoing service issues.
Source: https://cybersecuritynews.com/microsoft-outlook-com-issue-blocks-users/