Users of Microsoft Outlook on Apple devices are experiencing service disruptions for a second day.
The online wobble, which started in the wee hours of March 4, relates to accessing email via the native mail app on iOS gadgets and continues to confound engineers at Microsoft.
First acknowledgement of the problem came at around midnight UTC on Sunday, with confirmation that “Microsoft is actively investigating the issue”. According to the service health page at 1426 UTC today, techies at Microsoft were still scratching their heads:
“We’re continuing to investigate the underlying cause of why users attempting to access their email using the native mail app on iOS devices are impacted.”
Not very comforting for affected users, particularly as the next update will only arrive at 2030 UTC tonight.
The problem appears to center on authentication, and re-entering the password might resolve the issue. Or it might not, in which case affected users will have to wait until Microsoft entirely fixes things.
It hasn’t been a good few days for Microsoft Outlook on desktop or mobile. Service delivery went awry over the weekend when users were unable to access the email service. Microsoft blamed the issue on faulty code, which it swiftly rolled back. However, users continue to experience technical troubles.
The woes come in the same week Microsoft launched delivery and read receipts in the beta version of Outlook for Android and the TestFlight version on iOS. We suspect Microsoft will have rectified any lingering issues long before the new features reach production. Here’s to hope.
The Register asked Microsoft if there was any more information on the struggles with Outlook, in addition to the limited notes on its service health page, but the company has not responded.
Microsoft’s support mouthpiece today told one user on X who was complaining about the company’s email service: “We’re aware of an incident with similar symptoms,” and directed them to its support page.
Microsoft’s email services have had better weeks. While the current iOS native mail app issue affects only a subset of users, and the Exchange Administration Center issues yesterday impacted another subset, the overall picture is not positive for the company’s cloud-based email service. ®
