Outlook faced all sorts of issues earlier today, but Microsoft says they're fixed now

Today, Microsoft Outlook users around the world experienced major problems, including app crashes, high memory usage, and login issues. Although Microsoft initially claimed that the problem mainly affected European users, reports quickly emerged from users in other regions, such as the US, indicating a more widespread problem.

Users had trouble logging into their Outlook accounts in the morning. The Outlook desktop client had excessive memory usage, causing freezing, crashing, and slow system performance. Some users were advised to restart their systems. Similar issues were also experienced by users of Outlook on the Web (OWA), as highlighted by Bleeping Computer.

Microsoft quickly responded, issuing an update via its Microsoft 365 Status X account, confirming that it was investigating the situation. According to an incident report (MO907654) posted in the Microsoft admin center, the company was focused on a memory management issue that was likely behind the crashes, sign-in failures, and high resource usage.

The company stated: “We’re analyzing data from customers experiencing crashes and high memory usage when using the New Outlook desktop app. We’re reviewing service telemetry and reproducing the issue internally to develop a mitigation plan.” At the peak of the issue, users were not only unable to access their Outlook email, but some found themselves blocked from other Microsoft 365 services due to the same sign-in problems. 

As mentioned above, while the issue mainly affected European users, reports from the US, Asia, and other regions also started trickling in. Users worldwide expressed frustration on social media, indicating that the impact was not limited to Europe. One US user posted, “Not just Europe. Outlook’s super janky in the US as well today, at least for my team.” Other users also complained about both the desktop and web versions of Outlook failing to load emails.

By mid-afternoon, the company posted that it had applied a targeted configuration update to address the memory management issue. This update, Microsoft said, should alleviate the crashes and memory consumption that users were experiencing.

“We’ve applied a config change and telemetry confirmed we’ve mitigated impact,” Microsoft stated. They advised users to refresh or restart their Outlook sessions to restore normal functionality. After monitoring the fix for several hours, Microsoft declared the issue resolved late in the day.“After extended monitoring and addressing lingering impact, we’ve declared the incident mitigated. If users are still experiencing impact, please refresh/restart your Outlook sessions,” the company said.

Microsoft did not disclose the exact cause of the issue, but it seems a software glitch led to high resource consumption and app crashes. It’s unclear whether a recent update or system misconfiguration triggered the problem, but Microsoft’s swift response and mitigation seem to have brought the situation under control. We’ve not seen any fresh reports indicating that the issue persists.