Is Microsoft 365 down? Microsoft confirms major outage of services in some regions

Microsoft has confirmed a major outage is impacting its Microsoft 365 services in the North America region, taking out apps and services such as Outlook, Purview, and Defender

"We've identified a portion of service infrastructure in North America that is not processing traffic as expected," Microsoft confirms. "We're working to restore the infrastructure to a healthy state to achieve recovery."

That was a statement issued by Microsoft over two hours ago, with the latest updates stating that the company is "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."

• Some of the impacted service functions include, but may not be limited to:
  • Sending and receiving email through Exchange Online, including notification email from Microsoft Viva Engage as well as subscription email for Microsoft Fabric users. Users may be receiving a "451 4.3.2 temporary server issue" error message when attempting to send or receive email through Outlook.
  • Collecting message traces.
  • Searching within SharePoint Online and/or Microsoft OneDrive.
  • Accessing the service portals, including Microsoft Purview, Microsoft Defender XDR, and the Microsoft 365 admin center.
  • Creating chats, meetings, teams, channels or adding members in Microsoft Teams. Additionally, some users may be unable to create breakout rooms
  • Receiving presence or location information in Microsoft Teams.
  • Existing or new meeting options for Facilitator in Teams may not be honored.
  • Applying and managing sensitivity labels, interactive operations on reports, and artifacts with sensitivity labels in Microsoft Fabric.

Many users are continuing to report service outages in the North America region, which is stopping people from accessing their emails and more. The company has identified the problem and is rolling out a fix, meaning services should be restored soon.

We'll keep you updated on when Microsoft confirms services are back at full operation.

This is an ongoing story...