Microsoft Outlook for iOS still down and out for many after 'service change'
Sign-in failures, unexpected sign-outs... just another day for users
Users of Microsoft Outlook on iOS are continuing to experience outages more than 24 hours after glitches first surfaced, despite Microsoft's assurances it rolled back the configuration change and restored services.
Users began complaining about access on Monday morning at 0845 UTC, and, just after midday (UTC), Microsoft confirmed: "We've discovered some users may experience intermittent sign‑in failures, including 'too many requests' errors, or unexpected sign‑outs."
Affected iOS users were unable to access their email after being locked out due to too many failed password attempts. Some users thought they were victims of hacking, others were just confused and frustrated. The good news was that it appeared only the iOS version was affected. The bad news was that Microsoft couldn't fix it quickly.
A few hours after Microsoft confirmed the malfunction came the inevitable: "We've identified a recent service change that is potentially contributing to impact."
Cue a rollback to see if the problem went away. Sure enough, a few hours later, Microsoft posted, "System telemetry indicates that the service is recovering following the configuration roll back."
So, 10 points to Microsoft's engineers for fixing the problem, but minus 10,000 points for deploying a change that broke things in the first place. In fact, even those 10 points are at risk as users are continuing to complain this morning that things aren't back to normal.
Microsoft's status page still reports "Service degradation" for its consumer products at the time of publication. It includes the text "iOS users may experience issues accessing Outlook and Hotmail from the iOS default Mail app," even though it insists the "end time" of the outage was "Monday, April 27, 2026, at 1916 UTC" and that "its final update" at 2246 UTC last night would be the final update on the matter.
The Register contacted Microsoft for comment, and to confirm it has resolved the issue despite the ongoing service status page indicators and the evidence of users' eyes, but the company did not respond.
This latest debacle, caused by a configuration change, adds to the general feeling that Microsoft's cloud is more like a tottering Jenga tower than a robust solution. In this instance, it is "only" Outlook on one of the most popular mobile devices in the world that is affected.
Previous configuration changes or code updates took down other Microsoft services. After one incident, a Microsoft spokesperson told The Register: "We are working to enhance our detection of similar events and reduce the time needed to identify, mitigate, or prevent such impacts."
It seems like the company still has a way to go. ®