Microsoft said Thursday that a major outage disrupted its Microsoft 365 services, leaving tens of thousands of users unable to access email, files and online meetings. The problems, which began early Thursday afternoon, affected core platforms including Outlook, Microsoft Teams and other Microsoft 365 products, according to user reports and the company.
“We’re investigating a potential issue impacting multiple Microsoft 365 services, including Outlook, Microsoft Defender and Microsoft Purview. Further information can be found in the admin center under MO1221364,” the Microsoft 365 status account posted on X just after 2:30 p.m. ET.
Microsoft said on X at 4:14 p.m. that it had “restored the affected infrastructure to a healthy state.”
Is Microsoft 365 Down? What We Know
Microsoft confirmed Thursday that a widespread outage was affecting Microsoft 365 services, including Outlook and Teams, after users across North America reported being unable to access key productivity tools. The company said engineers identified a portion of its service infrastructure that was not processing traffic as expected, leading to service disruptions for thousands of customers. Outage tracking site DownDetector logged tens of thousands of reports as the problem spread through business and enterprise users, prompting Microsoft to acknowledge the issue publicly and begin mitigation efforts.
What Issues Are Being Reported?
Users reported a range of problems tied to the outage, including an inability to send or receive emails through Outlook, difficulty accessing files stored in Microsoft 365, and failures when attempting to join or host Microsoft Teams meetings. Some customers said they were unable to log in at all, while others experienced intermittent service interruptions. The disruption affected workplaces broadly, particularly businesses that rely on Microsoft’s cloud-based platforms for daily operations, collaboration and communication.
When Could Microsoft Service Resume?
Just before 6 p.m., the company posted, “We’re rebalancing traffic across all affected infrastructure to ensure the environment enters into a balanced state. We’re proceeding as quickly as possible and this approach will help us identify any additional actions needed for recovery.”
However, Microsoft has not provided a specific timeline for full service restoration but said teams are actively working to recover affected infrastructure and reroute traffic. The company advised customers to monitor its official Microsoft 365 Service Health and Cloud Status pages for updates as engineers continue remediation efforts. Similar outages earlier this week were resolved within hours, though Microsoft cautioned that recovery times can vary depending on the complexity of the underlying issue.
Updates: 1/22/26, 6:11 p.m. ET: This article was updated with new information.
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