Outlook down? Microsoft confirms issues with email service, but a fix is now here

If you logged in for work this morning and found you couldn't access your emails - don't worry, it wasn't just you - Microsoft Outlook had a major blip today.

Thousands of users across the world reported issues with the email service, with complaints of failed launches, memory-intensive running and more.

Microsoft has found a solution, and is urging users to refresh or restart their Outlook instance - you can read all the advice below...

Users began reporting issues with Microsoft Outlook around 9am ET, with reports rising as more and more people log on for work.

The latest figures from outage tracking site DownDetector show a sharp spike in reports throughout the day.

Microsoft has acknowledged the issue, saying it is attempting to replicate it internally in order to find out more...

The issue was initially thought to only affect users in Europe (with Microsoft's own tweet even stating this ) - but as this DownDetector heat map shows, it is now spreading across the US, as people log in to work for the day.

Reports have now topped the 2,000 marker, which means it is continuing to grow - we're still waiting on the latest update from Microsoft though...

The end may be in sight - we're seeing a slight drop in reports, and over on Twitter, the complaints are dwindling for sure...

However it seems like Microsoft itself is still struggling to find a concrete fix, with its latest tweet saying it is "focused" on trying to find out what has gone wrong....

We may finally have a breakthrough!

Microsoft says it is about to roll out a possible solution, having hopefully identified the issue - let's see how this goes....

We have a fix! Microsoft has confirmed it has a solution, and users should restart or refresh their Outlook sessions - hopefully this works.

Initial feedback looks good, and outage reports on DownDetector are falling, so this could well be the end of the Outlook outage - if you're still having trouble, drop us a line on news@techradar.com - we'll stay vigilant for a little while longer to see if anything else happens!