Today, Microsoft 365 faced a widespread outage that disrupted key services such as Exchange Online, Microsoft Teams, SharePoint Online, and other critical platforms like Outlook and OneDrive. The outage, which began in the early hours of the day, left thousands of users unable to access these essential productivity tools.

 

 

The Scope of the Microsoft Outage

The outage significantly impacted several services, with reports flooding into Downdetector, showing over 5,300 complaints by noon. Users reported issues primarily with Outlook, followed by Exchange and SharePoint. Connectivity issues also extended to Purview, Copilot, Microsoft Fabric, and even Microsoft Defender for Office365, making it a widespread problem across the ecosystem.

Microsoft acknowledged the problem early, noting that users were experiencing difficulties accessing Exchange Online, performing functions within Microsoft Teams, and other vital collaboration tools. These issues spanned both web-based and desktop applications, including REST and Exchange ActiveSync (EAS).

 

Cause and Mitigation Efforts

Microsoft traced the root of the problem to a “recent change” in the system, which inadvertently led to the widespread outage. To mitigate the impact, Microsoft swiftly deployed a fix across the affected infrastructure. The process involved manually restarting certain systems in an unhealthy state to restore full functionality.

As the fix rolled out, Microsoft provided continuous updates. By the afternoon, the solution had been implemented in approximately 60% of the affected environments. Engineers continued manual restarts on the remaining machines while closely monitoring the recovery progress.

 

Conclusion

There’s no doubt this issue will be handled swiftly, and that their fixes will be made complete soon. The moral of the story here is that even a network giant like Microsoft still needs proactive maintenance to keep their services active and that any business out there is no exception to this rule.