Outlook.com Premium has become almost unusable – Missing Chinese language, delayed emails, and no way to contact support

Question

Outlook.com Premium has become almost unusable – Missing Chinese language, delayed emails, and no way to contact support

zhuan ye 0

honestly don't know where else to ask for help because it's almost impossible to contact Microsoft support anymore.

I am a paid Microsoft customer, yet I can't find any effective way to report this issue or speak with anyone. This is extremely frustrating.

My Outlook.com account has been experiencing multiple serious problems for over a month, and none of them have been resolved.

1. Chinese language completely disappeared

My Outlook web interface suddenly became a strange mix of Chinese and English.

Even worse:

Windows is in Simplified Chinese.
My Microsoft Account is in Simplified Chinese.
The problem occurs in both Chrome and Edge.
It happens on both outlook.live.com and outlook.office.com.
In Settings → General → Language and time, there are NO Chinese language options at all.

Not Simplified Chinese. Not Traditional Chinese.

They are simply gone.

This is clearly not a browser issue or a local settings issue.

2. Outlook email delivery is extremely delayed

This is an even bigger problem.

For more than a month, emails sent to my Outlook account often arrive hours later.

Sometimes I receive them 2–3 hours after they were sent.

This makes Outlook completely unreliable for business communication.

To verify the problem, I tested with Gmail.

The exact same emails arrive in Gmail within seconds, while Outlook keeps delaying them.

So this is obviously not the sender's problem.

3. I am paying for this service

This is what frustrates me the most.

I am paying for Microsoft services, yet:

My language settings are broken.
Email delivery is unreliable.
There is no obvious way to contact support.
The Feedback option is missing.
The Contact Support pages either don't load or lead nowhere.

How is a paying customer supposed to get help?

My environment

Windows 11 (Simplified Chinese)
Microsoft Account language: Simplified Chinese
Outlook Web (latest)
Chrome & Microsoft Edge
Same problem on multiple browsers
Same problem on multiple Outlook web domains

My questions

Has anyone else completely lost all Chinese language options in Outlook?
Has anyone experienced severe Outlook.com email delays recently?
Is Microsoft aware of these issues?
Is there any way to reach an actual Outlook.com support engineer?

At this point, Outlook feels far less reliable than Gmail, which is disappointing because I have been using Microsoft services for years and I'm actually paying for them.

I would really appreciate it if Microsoft could investigate this account or explain what is happening. honestly don't know where else to ask for help because it's almost impossible to contact Microsoft support anymore.

I am a paid Microsoft customer, yet I can't find any effective way to report this issue or speak with anyone. This is extremely frustrating.

My Outlook.com account has been experiencing multiple serious problems for over a month, and none of them have been resolved.

1. Chinese language completely disappeared

My Outlook web interface suddenly became a strange mix of Chinese and English.

Even worse:

Windows is in Simplified Chinese.
My Microsoft Account is in Simplified Chinese.
The problem occurs in both Chrome and Edge.
It happens on both outlook.live.com and outlook.office.com.
In Settings → General → Language and time, there are NO Chinese language options at all.

Not Simplified Chinese.
Not Traditional Chinese.

They are simply gone.

This is clearly not a browser issue or a local settings issue.

2. Outlook email delivery is extremely delayed

This is an even bigger problem.

For more than a month, emails sent to my Outlook account often arrive hours later.

Sometimes I receive them 2–3 hours after they were sent.

This makes Outlook completely unreliable for business communication.

To verify the problem, I tested with Gmail.

The exact same emails arrive in Gmail within seconds, while Outlook keeps delaying them.

So this is obviously not the sender's problem.

3. I am paying for this service

This is what frustrates me the most.

I am paying for Microsoft services, yet:

My language settings are broken.
Email delivery is unreliable.
There is no obvious way to contact support.
The Feedback option is missing.
The Contact Support pages either don't load or lead nowhere.

How is a paying customer supposed to get help?

My environment

Windows 11 (Simplified Chinese)
Microsoft Account language: Simplified Chinese
Outlook Web (latest)
Chrome & Microsoft Edge
Same problem on multiple browsers
Same problem on multiple Outlook web domains

My questions

Has anyone else completely lost all Chinese language options in Outlook?
Has anyone experienced severe Outlook.com email delays recently?
Is Microsoft aware of these issues?
Is there any way to reach an actual Outlook.com support engineer?

At this point, Outlook feels far less reliable than Gmail, which is disappointing because I have been using Microsoft services for years and I'm actually paying for them.

I would really appreciate it if Microsoft could investigate this account or explain what is happening.

0 comments

1 answer

Your answer

Answer 1

Hi zhuan ye,

I’m sorry to hear that you have been experiencing these issues for more than a month. I understand how frustrating this must be and how much it may affect your work, especially as you are a paying Microsoft customer.

Since both Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese are missing from Settings > General > Language and time, and the same behavior occurs in both Chrome and Edge, the issue may require further investigation by Outlook.com Support at the account level. As an initial check, please open Outlook.com in an InPrivate or Incognito window and review the language list again. If the Chinese options are still missing, take a screenshot to provide to Support. Before sharing any screenshot on this public forum, please remove or conceal all personal information.

Regarding the delayed emails, please save the full message headers from two or three affected messages, together with the time each message was sent and the time it appeared in Outlook.com. This information may help Support determine where the delay occurred. Please do not post full message headers publicly, as they may contain email addresses, IP addresses, or other sensitive information.

Please also confirm that your Microsoft cloud storage and mailbox storage are not full. In addition, review the Junk Email folder, the Other tab, forwarding settings, and inbox rules to make sure the messages are not being redirected elsewhere.

Please note that this is a public, community-based forum. We do not have access to your mailbox, server-side delivery logs, subscription information, or account settings. Therefore, we cannot directly investigate or make changes to your account.

To contact Outlook.com Support, please follow these steps:

Visit Contact Microsoft Support.
Select Show expanded list of products.
Select Outlook, then choose Get Home support.
Enter Outlook live chat in the search box, then select Get Help > Contact Support.
Under Products and services, select Other Products > Outlook.
Choose Chat with a support agent in your web browser, if this option is available.

Support options and labels may vary depending on the account and region. If you cannot sign in with the affected account, you may use a different Microsoft account to access the available support options.

Thank you for your understanding.

Note: Please follow the steps in our documentation to enable e-mail notifications if you want to receive the related email notification for this thread.