X

Outlook, Hotmail are back up following lengthy outage

Microsoft says it has resolved the problems that took down its Outlook and Hotmail services since yesterday.

Lance Whitney Contributing Writer
Lance Whitney is a freelance technology writer and trainer and a former IT professional. He's written for Time, CNET, PCMag, and several other publications. He's the author of two tech books--one on Windows and another on LinkedIn.
Lance Whitney
Microsoft

Outlook and Hotmail are up and running once again.

A problem had rendered both online e-mail services inaccessible to many users since yesterday. But Microsoft's status page now shows both of them are back in business.

The page gives no details as to what caused the outages or how they were resolved.

Hotmail, Outlook, and SkyDrive were all hit by downtime yesterday, starting at around 2:30 p.m. PT. Many users had taken to Twitter to report the outage and express their frustration over the inability to access their e-mail.

Microsoft's status page shows that the problem was fixed a little after 7:30 a.m. PT this morning, meaning the outage lasted about 17 hours.

A Microsoft spokesperson sent CNET the following statement:

Hotmail and Outlook.com experienced an outage that affected customers' access to their email. Fortunately the issue has been resolved and service is now restored to normal. We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this caused our customers.

Outlook and Hotmail have had a rough year so far.

In January, mobile users of the two services were unable to access their e-mail for several days. Late this past month, Outlook.com was inaccessible to some users.

Updated 9:25 a.m. PT with statement from Microsoft.

Screenshot by Lance Whitney/CNET