On Monday, Microsoft suffered a major service disruption that impacted Microsoft 365, causing problems for users of Outlook, Exchange, and Teams. The outage started at about 4 a.m. Eastern Time, and quickly grew, affecting more than 5,300 users by noon.
The technical issue mainly affected Exchange Online and the calendars in Microsoft Teams. As a result, users were unable to access their emails, cloud storage, and scheduling tools. Microsoft recognized the problem early on Monday and explained on X that it was caused by a “recent change” that they were in the process of undoing.
By 9 a.m., Microsoft began addressing the issue by deploying patches and manually restarting the affected machines. Although they announced that about 98% of the impacted systems had been reached, the company still encountered difficulties in the recovery process. By 2 p.m., the tech company was still struggling to fully restore all services.
At some point, the incident was likened to the CrowdStrike outage in July, which had widespread effects around the world. However, the 365 outage wasn’t as severe, although it still created significant inconvenience for businesses and office workers.
Despite the disruption, some users in the U.S. found humor in the situation. Many joked online about enjoying the unexpected break, especially with the Thanksgiving holiday weekend approaching.
Throughout the day, Microsoft kept users informed about the situation. They acknowledged the “significant impact” the service disruption had caused and assured everyone that they were committed to fixing the issues as quickly as they could. However, they did not provide a specific timeline for when all services would be fully restored.
