Select Page

Outlook not showing emails as Microsoft confirms Office 365 outage

Outlook not showing emails as Microsoft confirms Office 365 outage

Microsoft Outlook users were hit by a very strange issue last night which saw them unable to access messages and text disappearing from emails. The issue began at around 3pm on May 11 with Microsoft quickly confirming that the problem was being investigated. Microsoft has since announced that a fix has been released with users hopefully receiving the update today.

“We’ve identified the underlying cause of impact and are applying a fix,” Microsoft confirmed.

In an incident status message in the Microsoft 365 Admin Center titled ‘EX255650: Issue affecting viewing email content in Outlook’, Microsoft states that they have identified the root cause of the issue and released a fix.

Title: Issue affecting viewing email content in Outlook

User Impact: Users may be unable to view email message content within Outlook.

More info: Impact is specific to the Outlook client and users with access to other protocols, such as Outlook on the web or the Outlook mobile app, can view message content in those platforms as a potential workaround while our fix is applied.

Current status: We’ve identified the underlying cause of impact and are applying a fix. This fix will reach all affected users incrementally over the course of the next four-to-five hours. Once users receive the fix, they will need to restart their email client to apply the fix. In some circumstances, users may need to restart their client a second time for the changes to take effect. We expect to complete this process and restore service for all affected users by May 12, 2021, at 3:00 AM UTC.

We encourage affected users who are able to do so to leverage the workarounds described above in the “more info” section of this post while we complete the process of fixing this problem.

Scope of impact: This issue could affect any user attempting to view an email message in the Outlook client.

Root cause: A recent change to systems that facilitate text display management for content within the Outlook client caused impact.

“This fix will reach all affected users incrementally over the course of the next four-to-five hours. Once users receive the fix, they will need to restart their email client to apply the fix. In some circumstances, users may need to restart their client a second time for the changes to take effect. We expect to complete this process and restore service for all affected users by May 12, 2021, at 3:00 AM UTC.”

It’s unclear what was causing last night’s problems. When asked why Outlook was not showing emails correctly, the official Microsoft Outlook account on Twitter explained: “Thank you for flagging this with us; the engineering team is aware and actively working on resolving the issue. We appreciate your patience while a solution is reached. More details can be found under EX255650 in the admin centre.”

A further update from the Microsoft 365 support team revealed more on the subject, adding: “We’re investigating available data to isolate the root cause. Users with access to alternate protocols like Outlook on the web or Outlook mobile can use those as a potential workaround in the interim. More details can be found under EX255650 in the admin centre.

“We’re investigating an issue with email message visibility in Outlook. Outlook on the web appears to be unaffected.”

One user affected by last night’s Outlook problems wrote: “Having Microsoft Outlook issues here in Los Angeles as well. Outlook won’t display the full body of emails. The issue started about 90 minutes ago.”

About The Author

Russi Spoon

Web marketing is my thing, I enjoy audiobooks and data. InfoSec researcher and Security awareness advocate.