Microsoft Outlook Outage and Service Disruption, February 7

On February 6, 2023, at ~11:28 PM EST, Microsoft tweeted (@MSFT365status) that they were investigating an access and services issue for Outlook.

For IT pros and system admins with access to the Microsoft Admin Center, the service incident number was EX512238.

We're investigating access and service issues for Outlook. More information will be provided in the admin center under EX512238 as it becomes available.

— Microsoft 365 Status (@MSFT365Status) February 7, 2023

Within minutes of their first message, Microsoft sent a second message providing a link to the Office Service Status Portal page but they gave little information as to the source / cause of the issue and as to what remediation efforts were in place.

We’re analyzing recent changes to determine if they are impacting service functionality. Detailed information can be found in the admin center under: EX512238 and https://t.co/6gXPgoVudY.

— Microsoft 365 Status (@MSFT365Status) February 7, 2023

Within one hour of first announcing the issue, Microsoft communicated that they had confirmed that a "recent change" was causing the impact to Outlook and Outlook services and that they were continuing efforts to restore service availability.

At approximately 1:00 AM EST (February 7), Microsoft tweeted that infrastructure restarts were underway. The Outlook Service Status portal provided more details: users were impacted in that they may be unable to send, receive, or search email within Outlook.com. And this impact was to users primarily hosted in the North American region. Additionally, Microsoft disclosed that functionalities such as Calendar, consumed by other services such as Microsoft Teams, may also be affected.

We’ve begun our targeted restarts to portions of our infrastructure that are impacted by the recent change. We’ll provide more detailed information via EX512238 in the admin center and https://t.co/nEuSQarMf3.

— Microsoft 365 Status (@MSFT365Status) February 7, 2023

Within three hours of first reporting, Microsoft was messaging via @MSFT365status and the Outlook Service Status portal that some environments were seeing gradual improvements. Additionally, Microsoft stated that users in regions beyond North America also may experience some "residual" impact because of the infrastructure in North America.

Our targeted resources are progressing, and we’ve seen slight improvement in some environments. Alternatively, we’re exploring additional steps to expedite the resolution. More details are available via EX512238 in the admin center or https://t.co/k4X04cmEod.

— Microsoft 365 Status (@MSFT365Status) February 7, 2023

As of 6:00 AM EST, Microsoft stated that mitigation steps had been applied to the entire impacted infrastructure and that gradual service recovery was continuing. A second Microsoft service incident number was also provided: TM512245.

We've applied mitigation throughout the affected infrastructure, and we're starting to see gradual recovery. For more updates, please see EX512238 and TM512245 in the admin center.

— Microsoft 365 Status (@MSFT365Status) February 7, 2023

At 10:30 AM EST,, approximately 11 hours after their first message announcing the outage, Microsoft was able to confirm 99.9% restoration to all impacted services. However, the Outlook Service Status portal was still indicating a "red light" status for Outlook.

Availability is at 99.9%, with full restoration almost complete. We're continuing to monitor the environment to ensure full recovery. For more updates, please refer to tEX512238 and TM512245 in the admin center.

— Microsoft 365 Status (@MSFT365Status) February 7, 2023

And just before noon on February 7, 2023, approximately 12 hours from the start of the issue, Microsoft was confirming that the service incident was fully resolved for both EX512238 and TM512245.  Another check of the Outlook Service Status portal confirmed a "green light" status for Outlook services.

We've confirmed that the issue is resolved after an extended period of monitoring. Further details can be found under EX512238 and TM512245 in the admin center.

— Microsoft 365 Status (@MSFT365Status) February 7, 2023

The Importance of Microsoft 365 Monitoring

In a cloud-world, outages are bound to happen. While Microsoft is responsible for restoring service during outages, IT needs to take ownership of their environment and user experience. It is crucial to have greater visibility into business impacts during a service outage the moment it happens.

ENow’s Microsoft 365 Monitoring and Reporting solution enables IT Pros to pinpoint the exact services effected and root cause of the issues an organization is experiencing during a service outage by providing:

• The ability to monitor networks and entire environments in one place with ENow’s OneLook dashboard which makes identifying a problem fast and easy without having to scramble through Twitter and the Service Health Dashboard looking for answers.
• A full picture of all services and subset of services affected during an outage with ENow’s remote probes which covers several Microsoft 365 apps and other cloud-based collaboration services.

Identify the scope of Microsoft 365 service outage impacts and restore workplace productivity with ENow’s Microsoft 365 Monitoring and Reporting solution. Access your free 14-day trial today!