A major outage has disrupted Microsoft’s cloud services, leaving thousands of users unable to access key Microsoft 365 applications.
Reports of service failures began early Thursday afternoon, January 22. The disruption affected widely used platforms, including Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Teams, impacting businesses and remote workers.
According to Downdetector, users submitted more than 45,000 reports related to Microsoft 365 and nearly 40,000 reports linked to Outlook. Many users said they could not send or receive emails, access documents, or join virtual meetings.
Microsoft services including Outlook, Microsoft 365, Teams and the Microsoft Store are experiencing widespread outages Tens of thousands of users reporting issues. Microsoft says part of its North American infrastructure isn’t processing traffic as expected. Updates still coming. pic.twitter.com/52POogBzDD
— TCI Technologies (@tcitechs) January 22, 2026Microsoft confirmed the outage through its official Microsoft 365 account on X. The company said engineers had identified an issue affecting part of its service infrastructure in North America.
“We’ve identified a portion of service infrastructure that is not processing traffic as expected,” the company said in a post. Microsoft added that teams are working to restore the affected infrastructure and recover service traffic.
Thousands of Microsoft customers are reporting difficulty accessing the technology company's suite of Microsoft 365 services, including email program Outlook, Teams and other tools.
https://t.co/c8LDF7DYQr
— CBS News (@CBSNews) January 22, 2026The incident follows a similar disruption reported a day earlier. Microsoft attributed that outage to a third-party networking issue.
As of now, Microsoft has not provided a specific timeline for full restoration. Support teams continue to investigate and address the issue across affected systems.
Microsoft advised customers to monitor updates through its official cloud service status webpage for the latest information.
