A small number of users are unable to search in Outlook, regardless of whether they use Outlook on the web, the new desktop app, or classic Outlook. They typically see the message: "The service could not be reached. Showing offline search results." This was still occurring around 12:30 p.m. UK time on 8 September. Has anyone else seen this, and is there a known service issue or workaround?
4 Answers
We found an active service-health incident stating that some users in the UK were having trouble searching through Outlook on the web, classic Outlook, and the new desktop app. It looks like a Microsoft-side issue rather than a local Outlook configuration problem.
We’ve been seeing similar problems for weeks, although the pattern varies by user. Some users are stuck at “Loading Profile” in classic Outlook, while others can open Outlook but only receive offline search results. The new app has worked for some users, but not consistently for everyone.
Our affected users were mostly on classic Outlook because several internal tools still require it. Users on the new app weren’t initially affected, so switching temporarily may help where it’s possible, but this doesn’t appear to be a reliable fix.
Yes, we had several users report the same problem this morning. It affected both classic and new Outlook for some people, but searching started working again for those users around 1:30 p.m. UK time.

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