Microsoft investigates Outlook.com bug breaking email search

Microsoft is investigating an ongoing issue preventing Outlook.com users from searching their emails and triggering 401 exception errors.

When searching, users see an error saying, "Sorry, something went wrong. Please try again later."

"Our initial review of Outlook.com server logs, in parallel with HTTP Archive format (HAR) logs captured during an internal reproduction of impact, indicates 401 errors are occurring due to an exception when users attempt to perform the search," Microsoft says on the service health portal.

"We're continuing to investigate to confirm the source generating these exception errors and determine methods to remediate impact."

The outage started almost 11 hours ago, at 12:30 AM UTC, and Microsoft is expected to provide more details within the next couple of hours.

According to user reports, the search function is no longer working on the web, while the mobile version doesn't seem affected.

Others have reported having issues when contacting Microsoft 365 personal support, being caught in a loop of sign-in and Office 365 service choice prompts.

​The company has yet to provide information on what regions this ongoing search outage impacts.

On June 27, Redmond addressed another issue preventing customers across the Americas from accessing their Exchange Online mailbox through Outlook on the web.

Earlier in June, Microsoft also confirmed that some of its services, including Outlook.com, the Azure Portal, and OneDrive, were taken down by DDoS attacks claimed by a threat actor known as Anonymous Sudan (believed to have Russian ties).

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Update July 6, 8:30 AM UTC: Microsoft says it addressed the root cause behind the search outage.

"Our further analysis into the 401 exception errors has identified a recent service update which had introduced a configuration issue that prevented users' keyword searches in Outlook.com. After reverting the offending service update, we've validated that impact has been remediated," the company said.