[German]Microsoft is struggling with various disruptions to its cloud infrastructure in the last few hours (July 6 / 7, 2023). Hours ago, the search in Outlook.com was broken – the cause was probably a faulty update. And currently the status indicator reports problems with Microsoft Teams private.
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Outlook.com search has been broken
Users of Outlook.com were greeted hours ago with the cryptic error message 401 and the error text: Sorry, something went wrong. Please try again later. Both Bleeping Computer and neowin.net have picked up on this (now probably solved) problem.
In the office status dashboard , the following entry can be found since July 5, 2023, which was then marked as "solved" by Microsoft as of July 6, 2023:
Title: Users can't search using keywords in Outlook.com
User impact: Users couldn't search using keywords in Outlook.com.
More info: When attempting to search, users were receiving an error which stated "Sorry, something went wrong. Please try again later."
Final status: 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.
Start time: Wednesday, July 5, 2023, at 7:00 PM UTC
End time: Thursday, July 6, 2023, at 8:30 AM UTC
This is the final update for this event.
Title: Users can't search using keywords in Outlook.com
User impact: Users can't search using keywords in Outlook.com.
More info: When attempting to search, users receive an error which states "Sorry, something went wrong. Please try again later."
Current status: We're continuing to investigate into the 401 exception errors to confirm the source generating these errors and determine a plan to remediate impact.
Next update by: Thursday, July 6, 2023, at 7:30 PM UTC
Title: Users can't search using keywords in Outlook.com
User impact: Users can't search using keywords in Outlook.com.
More info: When attempting to search, users receive an error which states "Sorry, something went wrong. Please try again later."
Current status: 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. We're continuing to investigate to confirm the source generating these exception errors and determine methods to remediate impact.
Next update by: Thursday, July 6, 2023, at 2:30 AM UTC
Title: Users can't search using keywords in Outlook.com
User impact: Users can't search using keywords in Outlook.com.
More info: When attempting to search, users receive an error which states "Sorry, something went wrong. Please try again later."
Current status: We've identified an issue is occurring affecting users' ability to search using keywords in Outlook.com, and are reviewing Outlook.com service logs to identify potential sources of impact for further troubleshooting.
Next update by: Thursday, July 6, 2023, at 12:30 AM UTC
So the keyword search was down in Outlook.com. After an internal investigation of the 401 error, Microsoft informed that a recent service update led to a configuration problem. This prevented Outlook.com from searching for key guards. The problematic service update has been rolled back, fixing the effects of the bug. The service should be running cleanly again by now.
MS Teams Consumer: Bug unfixed for months
When I visited the status page of Microsoft's Office portal while writing this post, I did come across a notice that Outlook.com was working trouble-free. But the portal reported "We are having problems" and showed the following overview.
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At Microsoft Teams Consumer, Redmond writes that the users' contact lists are duplicated. The error first appeared in the status messages on March 28, 2023, but has not yet been fixed. Microsoft writes about this:
Title: Users' contact lists are duplicated
User impact: Users' contact lists are duplicated.
More info: This issue only impacts users who synced their personal account device contacts with Microsoft Teams. New syncs are no longer resulting in duplicate contacts since we've implemented the long-term fix.
To remove the duplicate contacts created by this issue prior to the completion of our long-term cleanup process, affected users can use the workaround described here: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook_com/forum/all/workaround-for-outlookcom-users-experiencing/d58d75c2-76a9-4176-b907-333ddfa44952
We'd like to get your feedback on the workaround we provided. From a non-mobile device, please rate this post and submit it in the textbox.
Current status: We've identified an issue with the cleanup solution while validating it in our testing environments. Deployment to the affected infrastructure will be delayed as we fix that issue, so we're determining the new estimated deployment timeline. Affected users can manually remove the duplicate contacts before our cleanup process is complete by following the instructions in the workaround article linked above.
Start time: Tuesday, March 28, 2023, at 12:00 PM UTC
Next update by: Friday, July 7, 2023, at 6:00 AM UTC
It's an annoying bug, but shouldn't affect MS Teams functionality as such. Nevertheless, it is surprising that the bug was not corrected for such a long time. The only thing that comes to my mind is "good things take time".
