A widespread outage affecting Microsoft 365 services has left users across the globe unable to access key platforms, including Outlook, Hotmail, and the main Microsoft 365 website, since Wednesday evening.
The disruption, which began at 10:30 PM UTC on May 14, 2025, has impacted both individual users and businesses relying on these services for email and productivity tools.
According to Microsoft, affected users attempting to visit sites such as https://outlook.com, https://outlook.live.com, https://www.hotmail.com, and https://www.microsoft.com/microsoft-365, along with related regional domains (e.g., .co.uk, .nl, .fr), are encountering a “500 Internal Server Error.” This error indicates a failure in site rendering, preventing access to critical services.
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Microsoft has identified the root cause as a code regression introduced in a recent feature update intended to enhance service logic. The company acknowledged the issue in a statement, noting, “We’ve identified that a recent feature update inadvertently contains a code regression that’s resulting in site rendering to fail and display a 500 error.”
As a temporary workaround, Microsoft has advised users to access alternative URLs, including https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365 for the general Microsoft 365 page and https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/outlook for Outlook. However, these workarounds may not be effective for all users, particularly those on regional domains.
According to the Microsoft service status, Microsoft’s technical teams have validated a fix and have begun deploying it to the affected environment. The company anticipates full resolution by 3:30 PM UTC on May 15, 2025, with an earlier update promised by 1:30 PM UTC to provide further details on the progress.
The outage has sparked frustration among users, many of whom have taken to social media to voice their concerns. Small businesses and remote workers, in particular, have reported disruptions to their workflows, with email access being a critical component of daily operations.
This incident follows a series of high-profile tech outages in 2025, underscoring the challenges of maintaining reliable cloud-based services at scale. Microsoft has assured users that it is prioritizing the issue and working to restore full functionality as quickly as possible.
For ongoing updates, users are encouraged to monitor Microsoft’s official service status page or follow the company’s announcements on social media platforms.
Final Update: May 15, 2025, at 3:30 PM UTC Microsoft fixed the issues after 24 hours and stated that “We’ve completed deployment of the fix and confirmed through internal testing that the impact is remediated.”
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