Microsoft 365 was down for thousands of users – here’s what happened

Did you have trouble accessing Microsoft 365 earlier today? You weren’t alone. The site was down for thousands of people, according to outage tracker DownDetector. At the peak at around 9 AM ET, more than 24,000 people had reported issues attempting to access the site. But the site and related Microsoft online services all appear to be back up at this point.

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In response to the outage, a post on X from the Microsoft 365 Status account said: “We’re investigating an issue where users may be unable to access multiple Microsoft 365 services. Please look for MO888473 in the admin center for more details and further updates.” 

Ironically, Microsoft’s own service health page for its online products and services showed that everything was fine. However, that page points mostly to consumer products. A different Microsoft status page geared more toward enterprises acknowledged that “users may be unable to access one or more Microsoft 365 services.”

Initially, Microsoft said that it was reviewing network telemetry, looking at any recent changes to its networking infrastructure, and working with a third-party Internet Service Provider to understand the underlying cause.

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In an update to the aforementioned MO888473 alert, Microsoft said that by working with the ISP, it was able to confirm that a change in the ISP’s managed-environment impacted such services as Microsoft Teams, Exchange Online, and SharePoint Online.

After the ISP reverted the change, the affected sites and services began to recover, with all of them now up and running, according to Microsoft’s Service Health Status page for its cloud-based services and Service Health page for Microsoft 365. In a follow-up post on X, the Microsoft 365 Status account said it confirmed that the impact has been remediated.

DownDetector first reported that the problem seemed to be related to issues at Microsoft Azure, the company’s cloud-based environment for enterprises and other organizations. The site also reported possible issues with Microsoft Services when connecting through AT&T Fiber in the US East region.

Many of the people responding to Microsoft’s post on X agreed that it seemed to be an issue with AT&T. Some who switched from AT&T to a backup system were then able to access the affected Microsoft services.

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