Microsoft's Outlook and Hotmail email services are down

ONLINE EMAIL SERVICES Outlook and Hotmail are experiencing a system outage, with users are unable to access either service.

Microsoft has yet to figure out the cause of the problem and has admitted on its Outlook service status page that whatever it is, it is taking much longer than it expected to fix.

The company issued a statement last night at 9.35pm UK time, confessing that it was have trouble accessing email.

"You might not be able to see all your email messages. We're working to restore service right now," the firm said.

However, earlier today Microsoft said it was still working on the problem and has yet to find the cause.

"Fixing the problem is taking longer than we hoped," the company said. "We apologise for the lengthy interruption in service."

The Redmond firm has promised it will provide a further update at about 10:00am today, but we aren't holding our breath.

In a statement sent to The INQUIRER a Microsoft spokesperson said, "Microsoft is investigating an issue affecting customers' access to Hotmail and Outlook.com, and we are working to restore full access to the service as quickly as possible. For the latest information, we encourage people to visit the Hotmail and Outlook.com status page."

Microsoft is in the process of transferring Hotmail users to its new and improved online email service, Outlook.com. The service came out of preview mode last month, with Microsoft announcing that it will replace Hotmail.com "soon".

It's almost seven months since Microsoft unveiled the preview of its updated email service last July, which it claims has since gained over 60 million active users.

Whether the service issues are related to this migration is yet to be seen. 

Update
It seems Microsoft's email services are not down for all, as one INQUIRER staffer has managed to log onto Outlook.com, and has successfully both sent and received emails. For the most of us, however, we're still unable to access the services. µ