Microsoft is investigating a widespread service issue causing authentication issues, connection problems, service delays and failures, and various other issues for Microsoft 365 customers.
It first acknowledged the incident (tracked under EX1464935 in the admin center) at 5:30 PM UTC, when it began investigating a stream of reports from users on social media regarding multiple issues affecting Exchange Online.
However, while Exchange Online is the most impacted service, Microsoft revealed in a new incident report (MO1465074) that this outage also impacts multiple other Microsoft 365 services, including OneDrive for Business and SharePoint Online, Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Purview, and Microsoft Defender XDR.
According to outage tracking service Downdetector, tens of thousands of Outlook and Microsoft 365 users are affected and experiencing issues receiving emails via Outlook and accessing Microsoft cloud services.
Microsoft says the list of Exchange Online symptoms includes:
- Delays or failures when sending or receiving email messages.
- Delays, failures, or incomplete results when searching for content within Exchange Online mailboxes.
- Authentication-related errors when accessing Exchange Online services.
- Difficulties accessing or performing actions within Exchange administration experiences.
- Intermittent failures affecting mailbox operations and message delivery workflows.
Although the company has yet to reveal which regions are impacted, it has classified this outage as an incident, which is typically used to describe critical service issues with noticeable user impact.
”We’ve isolated a common failure pattern across affected Exchange Online requests that is associated with authentication and protocol connectivity,” Microsoft added in the latest admin center update.
“We’re analyzing service telemetry to identify the underlying source of impact and validate potential remediation options. Additionally, we’re continuing to assess the scope of impact and monitor for additional affected scenarios.”
Microsoft has addressed multiple Exchange Online outages in recent months, most recently in June, when it mitigated a widespread service issue affecting the mail flow pipeline for customers across North America, Asia-Pacific (APAC), and Europe.
In April, it also resolved Exchange Online mailbox access issues that had intermittently impacted Outlook mobile and macOS users for weeks, and an Exchange Online outage that prevented users from accessing their mailboxes via Outlook on the web, Outlook desktop, Exchange ActiveSync, and other Exchange Online connection protocols.
Latest Updates on the Microsoft 365 Service Outage
August 31, 14:29 EDT
Microsoft identified the issue as being related to core authentication configuration problems used by multiple internal services within the Exchange Online infrastructure.
August 31, 15:09 EDT
The incident was subsequently tracked under reference MO1465074. Microsoft also confirmed that the issue was affecting several additional Microsoft 365 services, including OneDrive for Business, SharePoint Online, Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Purview, and Microsoft Defender XDR.
August 31, 16:12 EDT
Following confirmation that multiple Microsoft 365 services were impacted, the incident coverage and title were updated to reflect the broader scope of the outage.
September 01, 10:29 EDT
Approximately 22 hours after the issue was initially acknowledged, Microsoft reported positive recovery trends based on its service telemetry and monitoring data.
September 01, 12:02 EDT
Microsoft confirmed that Exchange Online mail flow and search functionality had been restored.
September 02, 12:00 PM EDT
Microsoft stated that only a small number of users could still experience issues across some of the affected services. The company continued implementing and balancing fixes across its infrastructure to achieve complete and sustained recovery.
September 02, 06:29 EDT — Latest Update
According to Microsoft, service availability has remained stable at above 99%, and the majority of affected users should no longer be experiencing problems related to this incident.
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