work email not connecting to server so cannot send or receive email

Hello

This issue is published in the admin center > service health section. Our organization experiences this today too. I will share the information I copied from the Incident.

Some users may be intermittently unable to access their Exchange Online mailboxes in some connection methods

Issue ID: EX1256020

Affected services: Exchange Online

Status: Service degradation

Issue type: Incident

Start time: Mar 11, 2026, 7:00 PM CDT

User impact

Users may be intermittently unable to access their Exchange Online mailboxes in some connection methods.

More info

This issue may intermittently impact some users who are attempting to access the Exchange Online service through the Outlook mobile apps or the new Outlook for Mac desktop client.

Scope of impact

Impact may occur for some users intermittently and users may be unable to access their Exchange Online mailboxes with the Outlook mobile apps.

Root cause

A recent change within the Exchange Online service intended to introduce a new virtual account resulted in impact.

Current status

Mar 23, 2026, 12:46 PM CDT

We've disabled the change intended to introduce a new virtual account for a subset of affected users to test and monitor for remediation. After monitoring error trends for approximately 24 hours, we're seeing improvement, but the impact isn’t fully remediated at this time. We're continuing to monitor error trends to confirm the trend is decreasing while we review what additional changes we can implement to further improve availability and fully remediate impact.

Next update by:

Tuesday, March 24, 2026 at 1:30 PM CDT

Hi Darla Niemi

Thank you for reaching out to the Microsoft Q&A forum and for sharing your issue.

I understand how disruptive this situation can be, especially when multiple users are unable to access email and other Microsoft 365 services.

To better understand the issue, could you please help provide a bit more information:

• Are you able to sign in and check your email via Outlook on the web, or access other Microsoft 365 apps from the web?
• What type of Microsoft 365 license are the affected users assigned? Please ask your administrator to verify that the licenses are still active and properly assigned.
• Do you see any error messages? If yes, please share the exact error. If possible, you can also provide a screenshot via private message to avoid exposing any personal or organizational information.

Please understand that our initial reply may not always immediately resolve the issue. However, with your help and more detailed information, we can work together to find a solution.

I look forward to your update.

Note: Please follow the steps in our documentation to enable e-mail notifications if you want to receive the related email notification for this thread.

Follow these steps in order to restore access and identify the root cause:

1. Confirm Outlook is actually disconnected, not just working offline
   On each affected PC, check Outlook’s status bar:
   • If it shows Working Offline, turn it off: in classic Outlook go to Send/Receive tab → select Work Offline so the button background is clear.
   • If it shows Disconnected, continue with the steps below.
2. Verify general Internet and webmail access
   Since both locations have active Internet, test Microsoft 365 in a browser:
   • Go to Outlook on the web (e.g., via the Microsoft 365 portal) and check if users can send/receive mail there.
   • If email also fails in the browser for multiple users, this strongly suggests a service-side issue.
3. Check Microsoft 365 service health (admin only)
   If more than one person in the organization is affected (as in this case), an Exchange Online or Microsoft 365 outage or incident is possible.
   • A Microsoft 365 admin should go to the Microsoft 365 Service health status page and review the status for Exchange Online and other apps.
   • If an incident is listed, follow the guidance there; service will typically be restored by Microsoft without local changes.
4. Run Microsoft’s automated Outlook connectivity diagnostics
   For users whose Outlook desktop is not connecting even when webmail works:
   • An admin can run Run Tests: Outlook User Connectivity from the Microsoft 365 diagnostics.
   • The diagnostic performs automated checks for common connection issues and suggests fixes.
5. Update clients and Windows
   Out-of-date Outlook or Windows can cause send/receive failures:
   • Run Windows Update on affected machines to ensure the latest updates for Outlook and Microsoft 365 apps are installed.
6. If only some users are affected, repair their Outlook profile
   When service health is normal and webmail works, but certain desktops still cannot connect:
   • Create a new Outlook profile for those users and reconnect their Microsoft 365/Exchange account.
   • Start Outlook with the new profile and confirm that the status bar no longer shows Working Offline/Disconnected and that mail flows normally.

If, after these steps, multiple users in different locations still cannot access email or apps and service health shows no issues, escalate by opening a support request from the Microsoft 365 admin center so Microsoft can investigate tenant-level problems.

References:

• Fix Outlook connection problems for Microsoft 365 account
• Work offline in Outlook