Outages hit some users of Microsoft's Outlook.com

Microsoft is trying to fix a technological breakdown that has cut off some people from their email accounts on Outlook.com.

The Redmond, Washington, software maker says only a small number of people have been affected by an outage that began Wednesday morning. Microsoft's statement about the problem didn't provide any further specifics.

Earlier in the day, some people also could not retrieve their files stored on Microsoft's SkyDrive service. But that problem had been resolved by late morning PDT, according to an update on Microsoft's website.

Even if only a small percentage of Outlook.com users are cut off from their email, the trouble could be frustrating millions of people. Microsoft boasts it has more than 400 million accounts on Outlook.com.

Microsoft Corp. transferred all the users of its other Web email, including those with the hotmail.com and msn.com domains, to Outlook earlier this year as part of its attempt to outshine Google Inc.'s Gmail and Yahoo Inc.'s email.