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Microsoft's Outlook and Skype Are Facing Outages (theregister.co.uk)

Posted by msmash on from the outage-report dept.

People from all corners of the world are reporting connectivity issues when using Microsoft Skype and Office 365's Outlook, they said on Wednesday. The users are seeing a "Throttled" error message when attempting to access either of the aforementioned services, they said. From a report: The weird text box pops up in the chat software and cloud-backed email client, preventing people from sending messages, and talking to contacts. This is, according to Microsoft, due to a botched update to Azure's backend authentication systems. The internal upgrade was introduced as its engineers brought servers knocked out by storms in Texas back online. Outlook Web Access is said to be unaffected. According to mailing list chatter among IT bods and other sysadmins seen by The Register in the past hour, as well as tweets and Reddit threads, the outage is hitting businesses and subscribers at least throughout America, Canada, the UK, and Europe. Microsoft Office 365 tweeted just before 3 p.m. ET that the company has rolled back an update that was causing the throttling. It is testing to be sure that the problem is resolved.

26 of 53 comments (clear)

  1. hey, two nines beat one nine by Thud457 · · Score: 4, Funny

    Renaming to Office 363 now.

    --

    the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

    1. Re: hey, two nines beat one nine by cayenne8 · · Score: 2

      Blue Screen of Death.....Cloud style!!

      --
      Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
    2. Re:hey, two nines beat one nine by Aighearach · · Score: 1

      I can haz cloud? Or I can go outside? I can haz 364? I can haz error massage?

    3. Re: hey, two nines beat one nine by ls671 · · Score: 1

      Hahaha... I remember being on Microsoft campus just after they released Windows 2000 server and they had those 5 nines posters all over the campus. I took it with a grain of salt but they seemed really serious about this.

      https://news.microsoft.com/200...

      --
      Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
  2. The cloud!!! by nwaack · · Score: 2

    Hey, let's all be dependent on MS to host ALLz OF OUR BIZNIZ!!! What a great idea. What could possibly go wrong.

    1. Re:The cloud!!! by JaredOfEuropa · · Score: 1

      The cloud is just someone else's hard disk.

      --
      If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
    2. Re:The cloud!!! by cascadingstylesheet · · Score: 1

      Hey, let's all be dependent on MS to host ALLz OF OUR BIZNIZ!!! What a great idea. What could possibly go wrong.

      I know, right? Exchange servers never had problems before ...

    3. Re:The cloud!!! by nwaack · · Score: 1

      I'm not saying they didn't. But this outage basically affected the ENTIRE United States, not just a company or two.

  3. Microsoft Qality Control by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2

    Microsoft Qality Control

  4. I have Office 365 Outlook by apoc.famine · · Score: 4, Funny

    I couldn't tell that the last day or so was any different than any other day. It's always laggy and sluggish and stalls opening calendars.

    I'm more productive at work now that I'm forced to use Office 365's Outlook. Because I check email less because it's so incredibly shitty.

    --
    Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
    1. Re:I have Office 365 Outlook by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      A post Windows world in action, now your Linux is powered by Microsoft. :)

      "Embrace the future."

  5. Holy shit ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2

    This is, according to Microsoft, due to a botched update to Azure's backend authentication systems. The internal upgrade was introduced as its engineers brought servers knocked out by storms in Texas back online

    So, in the middle of restoring a major outage, they decided they'd sneak in an upgrade? You have to be joking me.

    This is IT 101, guys ... don't change two things at the same time, and don't piggy back on an unplanned outage to put in upgrades.

    Is this the quality of Microsoft's cloud? If it is, I'm not impressed.

    Shit like that will get you fired, and deservedly so. I fear Microsoft is promising way more than it can deliver if this is how they're restoring service after an outage.

  6. Obvious solution is obvious by Locke2005 · · Score: 4, Funny

    Have they considered using Linux servers instead?

    --
    I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
    1. Re:Obvious solution is obvious by Locke2005 · · Score: 1

      Thank you, Captain Obvious! Your work here is done!

      --
      I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
  7. not fixed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Dear Microsoft,

    Still get authentication failures when contacting smtp-mail.outlook.com

    Please build redundant datacenters, please test you software before you deploy it.

    I know, you have to earn money so cut costs on testing etc but I'm trying to do the same. So please please please fix your ****** crappy o362 software. Fix your even more ****** azure authentication layers

    And thank you for not informing customers about the problem. Always nice to read about them on a website. A service fee is after all not intended to provide you any service .

    Thx

  8. Absolutely no surprise by gweihir · · Score: 2

    Anybody with at least a cursory understanding how MS makes software and provides services is only surprised this has not happened earlier. Apparently they have now ensnared enough customers that they can stop trying extra hard (well, extra hard for MS levels).

    --
    Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
  9. Updates by dissy · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Well, I guess it isn't just home Windows 10 users that get buggy/broken untested updates pushed to us.

    Microsoft has never been known for quality, but they sure seem to eat their own dog food anyway.
    Not much of a consolation but at least there is a chuckle to be had.

    1. Re:Updates by Anne+Thwacks · · Score: 1
      Microsoft has never been known for quality,

      That is where you are wrong: even bad quality is still quality!

      Microsoft has always been proof of this.

      --
      Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
  10. Amazon outage too.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Amazon (shopping website) is also having an outage..

    Site is up but any searches for any items just yield blank pages with zero selection..

  11. I don't have a problem... by imidan · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Meanwhile, I've been using my locally installed copy of Office 2010 without any trouble at all. I'm even blissfully unaware of all the new and innovative features of Office in The Cloud.

    1. Re: I don't have a problem... by imidan · · Score: 1

      I work pretty frequently with other people who are on Office 365, and I haven't experienced any incompatibilities in Word, Excel, or PowerPoint. These are mostly pretty basic business documents, so it's possible that there are problems I'm just not running into because none of us are using incompatible features.

      If you can, check the packaging to see how many computers you can install it on. My version allows me to install it on ~3 computers, but I know they changed the licensing at some point to only allow 1 installation. (I think I saw an article the other day where they're talking about changing it back again.)

    2. Re: I don't have a problem... by imidan · · Score: 1

      I'll take that as a serious question. The last time I tried to really use LibreOffice, I went all the way and installed only Linux on my desktop, and LibreOffice came with. I had never used it much before, but I had no particular bias against it. I created a PowerPoint presentation on my Windows laptop, and then transferred it to my desktop to continue working on it. When I opened it in LibreOffice, it fucked my fonts, formatting, placement, and just about everything else. My text was the only thing that was properly loaded. My slides were useless as rendered by LibreOffice. I spent some time trying to fix them, but eventually decided to give up and finish my slides on my Windows laptop. I stopped using LibreOffice because it was effectively incompatible with MS Office, and I actually need to be able to interact with MS Office documents. I say this as a supporter and sometimes evangelist of open source software.

      LibreOffice is a good program, but it is *not* fully interoperable with MS Office. In my experience, LibreOffice cannot be realistically used to collaborate with colleagues who are using MS Office. I'm sure it works great standalone or in a group environment where everyone is using it.

      I am not a Microsoft fanboy. I'd rather use Linux as my primary OS. I admire the concept of LibreOffice. But MS Office, in my experience, is the only software that truly interoperates with MS Office. That doesn't make it good, but it does make it the industry standard.

  12. Only Idiots by NicknameUnavailable · · Score: 1

    Use Office 365. Office 2016 is still available, if it weren't then only idiots would use Windows (inclusive of "because work makes me.")
    Using the cloud has consequences, this is a relatively minor one.

  13. How's the outsourcing of basic desktop... by rnturn · · Score: 1

    ... functionality workin' out for ya now? I'm sure the beancounters were all for it but how's productivity today?

    --
    CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
  14. Re: Russians attack us by mSparks43 · · Score: 1

    nah, they hacked and shutdown various nsa servers, users seeing the messages were having their content routed through them.

  15. Re: Russians attack us by mSparks43 · · Score: 1

    as reported on tuesday