When Outlook refuses to collect emails… Outlook.com!

Do you use a email software ? If so, you may not have had access to Microsoft’s service for almost a week, and you’re not the only ones.

Although Gmail stole the spotlight several years ago, Outlook (formerly Hotmail) remains one of the most used email services. And for good reason: the Redmond firm encourages its use through its ecosystem, including in particular a certain Microsoft 365 appreciated by schools and businesses.

But, not everyone is always on top of their game, and users of Microsoft’s email service are currently experiencing this.

Outlook, or rather Out… connections

If you can’t check your Outlook mailbox through Microsoft’s various email clients, there’s certainly nothing you can do about it at the moment. For almost a week, many people have been experiencing the same problem, and the Redmond company even confirmed that it was aware of the situation.

So what’s going on? If we do not yet know the causes of the disease, we know the symptoms. Users were suddenly disconnected from their Outlook mailbox from their email clients. Although it is possible to re-enter the account credentials, connection remains impossible.

Although some have managed to get around the problem by using an application password, access to Outlook is still generally interrupted after a certain period of time. On the Microsoft forums and on Reddit, some claim to have found more stable solutions, but these rarely seem to work for other users.

A backup solution while waiting for a fix

Microsoft is not yet giving many details on the situation, but warns that the problem affects a large number of scenarios: “ Since approximately 01/23/24, users have reported connection issues with Outlook 2013, Outlook 2016, Outlook for Microsoft 365, Thunderbird and mobile messaging apps when connecting with POP, IMAP and Exchange bindings “. However, not everyone seems to be in the same boat. For my part, I had no problem either with Spark on Android, nor with the native macOS email client, Apple Mail.

Until a solution is found, the Redmond firm encourages unlucky users to turn to the Outlook web client. It is obvious that this solution will not please everyone, but it allows you to access your entire mailbox. All that remains is to hope that the causes of the problem are not too serious, like the disaster that Microsoft narrowly avoided last summer.

Source : Microsoft