Thousands of users in large locations like Minneapolis, Chicago, and Los Angeles were impacted by a severe outage of Microsoft 365 on Wednesday. Outlook and Teams problems were observed, and Downdetector recorded more than 4,000 disruptions.
On Wednesday, Microsoft 365 had a disruption. A number of customers reported that Outlook and Teams were also not functioning for them. According to Downdetector.com, thousands of users reported service interruptions.
Over 4,000 users reported issues with the platform, according to Downdetector, which tracks outages using information from multiple sources.
According to Downdetector, Microsoft 365 was unavailable in Minneapolis, Chicago, Los Angeles, Seattle, Atlanta, New York, Boston, Tampa, and Washington.
What did Microsoft say about the outage?
According to Microsoft, their study indicates that some users may not be able to access key Microsoft 365 services, such as Teams and Outlook, due to a possible problem with a third-party network.
We are looking into a problem with Microsoft 365 services, such as Teams and Outlook, after receiving reports about it. Microsoft stated on X that more details are available in the Microsoft 365 admin area under MO1220495.
We've received reports and are investigating an issue affecting Microsoft 365 services, including Teams and Outlook. Further information can be found in the Microsoft 365 admin center under MO1220495 or at https://t.co/HhkWRk0eVa.
— Microsoft 365 Status (@MSFT365Status) January 21, 2026
“Our investigation indicates a potential third-party networking issue may be affecting access to Microsoft 365 services, including Teams and Outlook for some users,” it continued. Additional details are available under MO1220495 in the Microsoft 365 admin center.
An earlier outage
On October 29 of last year, Microsoft announced that it had fixed an Azure cloud platform outage that had impacted many global businesses as well as the company’s productivity software suite.Microsoft Azure stated, “We are still working to mitigate this long tail, and a small number of customers may still be experiencing issues, even though error rates and latency are back to pre-incident levels.” The event lasted longer than eight hours.
After first reporting that the Azure outage had a downstream effect on its services, Microsoft 365 subsequently confirmed that the disruption brought on by the Azure configuration update had been fixed.
Azure reported that its clients and Microsoft services utilizing Azure Front Door, a worldwide cloud-based content and application delivery network, began to encounter problems that resulted in timeouts and errors on Wednesday at around 12 p.m. ET.
The number of people reporting Azure issues dropped from a peak of over 18,000 earlier in the day to 230 at 6:49 pm ET, according to Downdetector, which analyzes outages using user reports.
According to Downdetector’s website, the number of Microsoft 365 users impacted has dropped from almost 20,000 at the peak of the outage to 77 by 10:44 pm ET. The actual number of affected users may vary because these numbers are based on user-submitted reports.
The outage highlighted the vulnerability of the world’s interconnected digital infrastructure and was seen as the biggest internet interruption since the CrowdStrike incident in 2024, which had affected technological systems in hospitals, banks, and airports.
