Microsoft 365 Faces Outage, Affecting Thousands of Users

Many Microsoft 365 users experienced issues accessing the platform earlier today. According to outage monitoring service DownDetector, over 24,000 users reported problems, with the disruption peaking around 9 AM ET. Fortunately, Microsoft 365 and related services appear to be operational again.

In response to the outage, Microsoft 365's Status account on X (formerly Twitter) posted: "We're investigating an issue where users may be unable to access multiple Microsoft 365 services. Please refer to MO888473 in the admin center for further details." Interestingly, Microsoft's own consumer-facing service health page initially showed no signs of trouble. However, a status page focused on enterprise services did acknowledge the disruption, confirming that users were experiencing issues accessing certain Microsoft 365 services.

Microsoft quickly began troubleshooting by analyzing network telemetry and recent changes to its infrastructure. After working with an external Internet Service Provider (ISP), Microsoft discovered that changes within the ISP's managed environment were affecting services such as Microsoft Teams, Exchange Online, and SharePoint Online.