Outlook down: Desperate users ask 'please help' as millions without Hotmail access

Millions of users locked out of their Outlook accountsare begging the email provider for help as outage issues continue to rage.

Theapp and its connected website are used by more than 400 million people across the world. An exact number of affected accounts is currently unknown but it's believed to be in the millions. While logging in, some users are being told their licenses are invalid while others are unable to access their accounts despite entering the correct email addresses and passwords.

Microsofthas issued two statements, with one saying the issue would be "gradually mitigate[d]" as their fix was deployed. However, a short while later, they said they'd encountered another issue that may delay matters.

READ MORE: Microsoft Outlook down LIVE: Hotmail email down for millions of people

Frustrated users have taken to social media to demand answers from the computing giant.

Dr J S Suri, a veteran pathologist working in Delhi, India, wrote: "Is there a breakdown of hotmail worldwide? I am not able to use Microsoft account since morning. Please help. Is there a breakdown of hotmail worldwide? I am not able to use Microsoft account since morning. Please help."

Another user wrote: "Still no @Outlook don’t worry, just my whole world seems to revolve around email confirmations on my Hotmail today #dudewheresmyhotmail."

Tagging Microsoft, Adam W Patterson wrote: "This Hotmail issue is getting ridiculous now. You really need to hire better staff, and stop messing with your applications all the time. Everything is fine. We don’t want upgrades and tweaks. More often than not they just make our lives more complicated. Leave everything alone Ffs."

Users in some countries, like Italy, say they're facing a total blackout as they're locked out of both PC and mobile services. As it stands, issues have been reported in Australia, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, India, Italy, Peru, Spain, the Netherlands, the UK and the US.

According to outage map, DownDetector, the issues in the UK have been detected in several cities, including London, Manchester, Birmingham, Newcastle and Glasgow.

Customers are reporting a number of different error messages relating to different access issues. Some have been seeing pop ups that say "connection to server failed", while others are being hit with 500 and 401 errors.

A 500 error indicates the server is encountering an unexpected condition that prevents it from fulfilling the user's request. A 401 is shown when the request has been unsuccessful due to missing or invalid authentication credentials

One user wrote on X: "I can’t access my Outlook.com email. I keep getting 500 and 401 errors on every device and browser. Microsoft support tools are asking me to log in, but I can’t access my account."