Microsoft 365 outage disrupts Exchange, Teams and Outlook across North America
A North American infrastructure fault disrupted Microsoft 365 services, blocking Exchange email, Teams, Outlook and admin consoles; Microsoft says it’s restoring systems and rerouting traffic.
Overview
Who: Thousands of Microsoft 365 enterprise customers and users reported outages affecting employees, IT admins and security teams across North America, with reports on Downdetector peaking around mid-afternoon.
What: The outage impacted Exchange Online email, Outlook, Teams meetings and chats, SharePoint and OneDrive file search, and admin/security consoles including Purview and Defender XDR.
When: Users first reported problems Thursday afternoon; complaints spiked around 3:00–4:30 p.m. ET, and Microsoft posted initial alerts and follow-ups on its status and X accounts.
How Microsoft responded: The company attributed the issue to a North America service infrastructure segment failing to process traffic, said it restored infrastructure and is rerouting traffic to alternate systems.
Impact and next steps: Admin access and security dashboards were unavailable; Microsoft continues load balancing and recovery steps while affected customers await full service normalization.
Analysis
Center-leaning sources present the outage report neutrally, sticking to Microsoft’s status posts and service notices, listing affected products and quoting the company’s nontechnical explanation without loaded language. They avoid speculation, include basic impact details (Exchange, SharePoint, Teams), and note attempts to contact Microsoft, demonstrating balanced, factual coverage.
Sources (4)
FAQ
The outage impacted Exchange Online email, Outlook, Teams meetings and chats, SharePoint and OneDrive file search, admin consoles, Microsoft Purview, and Microsoft Defender XDR.
Users first reported problems Thursday afternoon around 2:00-3:00 p.m. ET, caused by a North America infrastructure segment failing to process traffic.
Microsoft restored the affected infrastructure, is rerouting and load balancing traffic to alternate healthy systems, and continues monitoring for full recovery.
Yes, Microsoft 365 and Teams had a brief outage yesterday (January 21, 2026) that was resolved quickly, unlike today's more widespread issue.
History
This story does not have any previous versions.