Microsoft Outlook goes down around the world - here's what we know

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If you're having trouble logging in to your email this morning, you're (probably) not fired. A massive outage is affecting Microsoft's Outlook service, leaving many people unable to access their email accounts.

Reports of problems started shortly before 10 p.m. ET Wednesday, but surged just before 7 a.m. ET. As of 9 a.m., reports were still on the rise, indicating there was no resolution, according to Downdetector.com, a site that tracks outages. Downdetector is owned by ZDNET's parent company, Ziff Davis. 

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Outlook has over 400 million active users around the world. This issue seems to be affecting both personal and work Outlook accounts, as well as Hotmail accounts. Hotmail is also owned by Microsoft. Some users are seeing a message saying that their license is not valid, while others are seeing a message that says, "Something went wrong."

Screenshot by Artie Beaty/ZDNET

Microsoft has acknowledged the problem. Just after 9 a.m. E.T., the Microsoft Health Portal showed that Outlook was experiencing some sort of issue. "Users may be unable to access their mailbox using any connection methods," a message read, adding that the problem affected Outlook.com, the Outlook Mobile app, and the Outlook desktop client.

"We've identified an issue with the fix," Microsoft explained, but didn't offer a timeline. "We're applying configuration changes, restarting affected components and additional validations are underway to confirm that authentication components are properly configured."

Microsoft hasn't identified the cause of the problem. The company did say it would issue another update by 12:30 p.m. ET. It appears to be unrelated, but Microsoft had issues a few weeks ago with Outlook crashing when users started a new email or replied to or forwarded an existing email. A fix for that bug reached some users less than two days ago. 

This is a developing story.

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