Ever since Microsoft forced “new Outlook” on everybody to replace Hotmail, users have been plagued with daily connection issues. The company maintain it’s not their fault.
We can’t connect to Outlook at the moment. Please try again later.
We can’t connect to Outlook at the moment. Please try again later.
We can’t connect to Outlook at the moment. Please try again later.
We can’t connect to Outlook at the moment. Please try again later.
We can’t connect to Outlook at the moment. Please try again later.
We can’t connect to Outlook at the moment. Please try again later.
We can’t connect to Outlook at the moment. Please try again later.
We can’t connect to Outlook at the moment. Please try again later.
We can’t connect to Outlook at the moment. Please try again later.
We can’t connect to Outlook at the moment. Please try again later.
Welcome to my life since Microsoft forced “new Outlook” on us. And I’m not alone. Hotmail was a truly awful experience, but Outlook is worse. If companies are going to insist on using AJAX and JSON to power their apps, the least they could do is test th…
We can’t connect to Outlook at the moment. Please try again later.
We can’t connect to Outlook at the moment. Please try again later.
We can’t connect to Outlook at the moment. Please try again later.
Every time someone reports the fault, the same answers come back time and again from condescending tech staff and forum moderators:
- Try a different browser
- Try a different account
- Try a different computer
- Clear the browser cache
- Disable / uninstall all browser add-ons
- Check for viruses
- Check your ISP connection
- Check Microsoft’s server status (which always reports “Running normally”, pah)
Notice anything about all those suggestions bar the last one? Yep, it’s not Microsoft’s fault. It’s never their software, in exactly the same way as my Skype problems weren’t their fault either. How long can corporations keep trying to pretend there aren’t bugs in software and admit they need to take ownership of issues if customers are to trust them? I’d like to say that the replies to the reported issues were sincere but the attitu…
We can’t connect to Outlook at the moment. Please try again later.
We can’t connect to Outlook at the moment. Please try again later.
See how frustrating it is?
I have one question that nobody has yet answered to my satisfaction: if the problem truly exists on my end and every other browser tab and machine connects seamlessly to the Internet while Outlook claims it can’t, why is the problem resolved if I return to the tab and refresh it some time later, yet the same issue will recur upward of six times a day?
Hmm?
Given the facts above, and that it affects swathes of other people, it doesn’t sound like it’s a local problem to me. But then maybe Microshaft aren’t technically savvy enough to look at data trends and admit there might be an internal problem; clinging instead to the notion that all computers are complicated and all users are stupid. If it wasn’t occurring in Internet Exploder as well, I’d have put money on them deliberately banjaxing other browsers to encourage people to switch.
Apart from one account that I keep for trusted individuals, I only have hotmail accounts because they’re “free” and I use them as spam honeypots when registering for things. So while this whole debacle is a laughable inconvenience for me, I feel sorry for people who have bought into the lies that this cloud thin client junk can be a serious tool. It’s not even as if hotmail makes it easy to migrate your emails to another provider. I routinely download mine to a local machine so if I need to up-sticks (and I’m seriously considering it now) I have an archive.
Trust is a two-way street and Microsoft are doing their level best to erect No Entry signs their end. Is that the way to attract business?
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20 varmints gave a toss
Good post which covers everything that I suffer as well.
Doesn’t matter what machine or os I use. The dreaded “We can’t connect to Outlook at the moment. Please try again later.” can come and go anytime and anywhere.
It’s very frustrating to not be able to use something as simple as email.
They have tried so hard to make the interface slick and resemble the windows 8 format that something is clearly broken somewhere.
Their support forums do reply to users like we are idiots.
We don’t need to keep reading the same replies from support which don’t actually address and obvious problems.
b.t.w, makes a change to see a textpattern site amongst all these W.P. ones.
I am pissed off with the cannot connect you now, try again later. YOu took a good system away and forced this non working crap on us Admit it and fix it
I am using my yahoo mail account since I obviously can’t open my Hotmail account at least with IE. Isn’t it amazing that the company that makes both the ISP and the email account can’t get it to work right and yet Hotmail works just fine if you use any other browser but IE. If you wish to use your Hotmail account simply use Chrome or Firefox and you won’t have any problems…
Hello,
So almost a year on from some of your messages and still I’m having this problem! Would have thought it would have been fixed by now. Could really do without it! Gonna have to get a new email account I guess, when I get round to it, when I have caught up with these old emails! lol
I have the same problem too, and it is totally annoying. Every time I try to delete the messages in my deleted folder, it pops up. Every time I try to delete the messages in my junk folder, it pops up. Every single time I start deleting messages in my inbox (about 5-10 messages), this stupid little message pops up. Outlook has a deletion problem, so it appears, at least in my particular situation. I am sure there’s other problems that also exist.
If anyone has figured out a solution, I would sure like to know. Thanks!
You say hotmail/outlook is free. I am sure, that was a mistake, as nothing is REALLY free. Microsoft are making money hand over fist directing adverts at you, helping security services keep tabs on you, selling usage statistics etc etc etc. Those accounts arent free they simply arent paid for with your money but inevitably you are paying for them.
@madmangle: quite true. I’ve amended the post to add inverted commas around the word “free”.
For the purposes of this post, to me, they are free because 90% of my hotmail usage is just to register spam trap accounts when signing up for stuff when I don’t want to be bothered by companies. To that end, since they cost me no direct money and I don’t ever log into them after the initial “confirm your email account” exchange, they are free in all senses of the word.
If Microsoft want to harvest or sell the account details of Bob Bobface who is a 120-year-old resident of Outer Mongolia who listens to Spinal Tap while knitting, more fool them!
Now, if you really want an intrusive email experience, try Yahoo’s Rocketmail, which is looking more like being inside an AOL browser every day.
Well i came up with a decent solution, I foward all my mail to a Gmail account from outlook, i set Gmail to send and recieve as my @outlook account, and i get the bonus of having Gmails far better search/tagging functionality Win win..
If I forward all my mail to a Gmail account will my older email also transfer. If not is there a way to get it over to Gmail?
I too have been experiencing this problem for many months. I don’t use IE. But the problem also occurs with FireFox and Chrome. So the problem is not browser specific – so it is clearly a hotmail/outlook problem, and it is extremely annoying.
@Mickey BK: I’ve noticed it’s recurred recently in the last month or two. Thought they’d fixed it, since it went away for a while, but it’s back now along with the irritating “Something happened on our end, please refresh your browser or close it and try signing in again” message.
And Microsoft wonder why people don’t want to use the online version of their Office suite…
Re: `We can`t connect to Outlook.com right now.`
Stef, when typing in this statement, it returns a frequent Microsoft message, `this page can`t be displayed.` Pure bush league.Well it is now Almost August 2015 and this problem still exists. WE CANNOT CONNECT TO OUTLOOK RIGHT NOW..PLEASE REFRESH..PLEASE TRY AGAIN LATER…SOMETHING HAPPENED AT OUR END.
I have my FREE HOTMAIL BUT ALSO MY TWO PAID SYMPATICO BELL CANADA ACCOUNTS SERVED THROUGH OUTLOOK.COM. I have called Bell many times since2012 when Microsoft coffined a perfect programme called Hotmail…and forced this OUTLOOK.COM ON US.
Notice they seem troubled for names and have 3 totally different programmes allll named OUTLOOK..PERHAPS THEY HAVE IT BACKWARDS AND IT SHOULD BE LOOK…OUT. BELL TELLS ME THEY ARE AWARE BUT TO CONTACT MICROSOFT. I DID PREVIOUSLY AND ALSO USE THE MICROSOFT WEBSITE MENTIONED ABOVE WITH THAT INEVITABLE…PLEASE SEND US A SCREEN SHOT…REPLY PRIVATELY TO PROVIDED EMAIL. USELESS…
@Nola: Haha “Lookout”, I like that.
Yep, this is still ongoing. Went away for a bit but came back recently. And people wonder why I think thin client, a.k.a The Cloud, is just as bad now as it was in the 90s.
Imagine paying for Office 365 (or whatever it’s called) which is probably powered by the same tech. The benefit of collaborating on a document with someone is completely negated if you can’t get to it when you need it or it won’t save properly.
I just migrated from the truly awful and bug-ridden yahoo to Outlook.com. Functionality is mostly much better – except for this message. I would say I had seen it 50 times today at least. Could exceed 100 times in fact. I have superfast Broadband, windows 10, Chrome – all works very well except Outlook.com
I couldn’t search for or delete anything in yahoo and the Outlook import tool is all or nothing, so I had to move 88,000 messages! (Took several days). But now I want to tidy them up. Any time I try to empty a folder it fails. Half the time if I try to compose a new email I get this message, although the saved draft is usually pretty good.
The message even appears when I am not doing anything, although maybe POP is going on in background, but that only works intermittently.
I refresh or close browser as requested – nothing helps.
Yes, I concur. The “We can’t connect to Outlook at the moment. Please try again later.” message happens frequently throughout the day and continuously from one day to the next. I can read outlook.com email (usually), but trying to search anything in my email when at the outlook.com site is hopeless.
I seem to have little or no problems of the same kind when using the Windows 10 app to access outlook.com.
I can not connect to outlook.com
it just does not work even after changing password
is there a web site that I can go to to correct this or a phone number that I can get to some live person
thanks
@Wallace. I believe since this is Microsoft we’re talking about here, the phone number is:
1-800-TOUGH-LUCK
I agree, typical Microsoft, blame everyone else… That’s why the Apple Community continues to explode, Microsoft has done very little innovation since it’s inception as MSDos.
Old Bill got his money, what does he care!
Bye Bye Bill, Hello Mr. Jobs!
I am on Chrome and this happens to me all the time. I am so fucking pissed off with it when trying to do a simple search for an email for an urgent project and can’t complete it…I’m moving everything to Apple. “Something happened on our end.” – at least they’re admitting they are the fuckups. But “Can’t connect to Outlook.com right now”— oh, we’re connecting all right, MS is just to fucked up to get anything to work. I hate PC (piece of crap). No wonder my Macs got stolen, which is why I had to work on the PC for several years…which never got stolen!
When fingers meet keyboard