Hotmail, Outlook services disrupted; Microsoft working on a fix

Microsoft’s Hotmail and Outlook services are currently disrupted, with users facing issues in accessing their emails. The Service status dashboard, read, “We’re having a problem accessing email. You might not be able to see all your email messages. We’re working to restore service right now. Mar 13 3:05 AM.” Microsoft later updated the status saying it was working a fix and that it would provide an update soon. 

Skydrive users too, were inconvenienced following service disruptions yesterday, where they were unable to add, edit or remove files. Users faced problems with publishing content using Windows Photo Gallery in an online album. The issue however, was resolved in a matter of hours.

Users took to Twitter with @FatMikeal tweeting, “Just for your information: Hotmail and Outlook are down,” while @bwhetstone tweeted, “Not happy right now. #hotmail is down and has been for hours. Anyone know why?”

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In addition to Hotmail, Outlook and Skydrive, Calendar too, faced hiccups yesterday. On its Service status dashboard, Microsoft confirmed that Hotmail was carrying out maintenance on Calendar. It said that viewing and editing calendars during this time, would possibly get slow, or users might see error messages occasionally, while using the service. At the moment though, Calendar seems to be up and running.

Skydrive is back up

Outlook.com, a fairly popular service is Microsoft’s answer to Google’s Gmail. Those using these services will know that it isn’t the first time in this year, that Hotmail, Skydrive or Outlook has had problems. Early this month, those using Skydrive were unable to add shared files to their Shared list. Users also experienced delays in viewing files and folders in their Shared list, once the items were shared with them. Only days later, several of Microsoft’s services, including Hotmail, Outlook, Skydrive and Messenger were disrupted. Those attempting to login to any product requiring a Microsoft account received error messages. 

Then early in January, a small bunch of users faced issues accessing some items on Skydrive. At the time, users were unable to view all their files. A day prior to that, there were hiccups with Hotmail and Outlook, wherein Microsoft said it was facing intermittent problems with some email features that had slowed down. Towards the end of January, Microsoft’s Calendar service was disrupted, where viewing and editing calendars got slow, and some users received error messages.  

Earlier in February too, Skydrive users were unable to access items, add, edit or remove files. A day later, following a short-term incident on Outlook.com and hotmail.com, a small percentage of customers were unable to access their accounts.