I haven't been able to access my Outlook email for many hours. How long will this problem persist?

Check Microsoft’s Service Health Status site for an active Outlook.com incident and its latest recovery estimate; Microsoft has not published a fixed general duration, and no active public incident ETA can currently be confirmed from its known-issues page.^1^

Because both Outlook on the web and the app are affected:

1. Open the Service Health Status site from another browser or device.
2. Look for Outlook.com or Microsoft 365.
3. If an incident appears, monitor that entry for the restoration estimate and progress updates. The estimate can change while Microsoft investigates.
4. If no incident appears, try Outlook.com in a private/incognito window:
   • If it opens there, the original browser session is likely the local problem.
   • If it still does not open, try a different network or device to distinguish an account/service problem from a device or connection problem.

For a work or school account, ask the Microsoft 365 administrator to open Microsoft 365 admin center → Health → Service health. That authenticated page provides the tenant-specific incident status and updates.^2^

If service health shows no outage and access continues failing across multiple devices and networks, contact Microsoft Support from the known-issues page. The available information does not support predicting whether this will last minutes or hours without a live incident entry.

References

1. Fixes or workarounds for recent issues on Outlook.com | Microsoft Support
2. Fixes or workarounds for recent Office issues | Microsoft Support