14 DAY TRIAL // It's been a while since Outlook.com, Microsoft's email service that replaced Hotmail, went dark for more than a few minutes, so it might be a little surprising to find out that today your inbox might not work at all.
Redmond itself has confirmed in a post on its service status page that Outlook.com is unavailable for a number of users, explaining that Windows Phone 8.1 and Windows 8 devices might not be capable of accessing the inbox.
The company also says that it's already working to address this issue and promises to make Outlook.com work again sometime today.
“We are aware that users of the following mail clients are experiencing issues syncing and sending email. We are working on the issue and expect resolution in the next 24 hours. - Windows Live Mail - Outlook Connector - MSN Premium client. - Windows Phone 8.1 - Windows 8 Mail Client,” the company says.
No info on what went wrong
Microsoft hasn't provided any details on what exactly went wrong with Outlook.com, but it has confirmed that the issue first appeared yesterday.
What initially seemed to be just a small glitch now turns out to be a widespread issue across several Microsoft platforms and devices, so there's no doubt that someone at Redmond had no sleep last night.
In the meantime, if your device is also experiencing Outlook.com connectivity issues, you can always try to access your inbox by pointing your browser to the web-based version of the service, which is still up and running.
Microsoft says that it will update us with more information in just a few hours, so we'll keep you posted when we have new details on the status of the service or on what exactly caused the outage.
Outlook.com is Microsoft's email service that replaced the famous Hotmail, so this new connectivity issues might fuel complaints coming from users who aren't exactly pleased with being forced to step away from Hotmail.
Update: Microsoft has provided the following statement to explain that a fix has been rolled out, but it could take time until the service is back online for everyone:
"We have rolled out a fix to address this issue. The fix will take time to resolve and we expect all services to be fully restored by later today Pacific Time. Impacted users can continue to access email via Outlook.com and any unaffected client."