Are Microsoft 365 and Outlook down? Thousands report outage ...

Show Caption

Hide Caption

Microsoft confirms the reason behind global outage

Days after the global technical outage, Microsoft announced the root cause of the issue, confirming that it was a cyber attack.

unbranded - Newsworthy

Microsoft on Monday morning said it is investigating an issue impacting users attempting to access services including its Outlook email product.

In a post on X, Microsoft wrote it is assessing "an issue impacting users attempting to use Exchange Online or functionality within Microsoft Teams calendar." Many companies use both applications for internal communications.

DownDetector, an online service that tracks tech outages, began reporting outages, which appear to be impacting people globally, about 8 a.m. ET.

Just before 11 a.m. ET the online service showed thousands of people had reported problems, some who posted the interruption on social media.

"#Microsoft outages to my planned productive work day," one user wrote. "Phone calls and handwriting may yet restore some order."

"We've identified a recent change which we believe has resulted in impact. We've started to revert the change and are investigating what additional actions are required to mitigate the issue," the software company wrote in a subsequent post. 

Microsoft said in an update that a fix had been distributed to "approximately 90% of the affected environments and our targeted restarts continue to progress."

Previous 365 outages

On Sept. 12, thousands of Microsoft 365 users reported outages, saying they were unable to sign into their email accounts or access other applications.

Microsoft resolved an outage not long after.

Microsoft 365 users reported outages, saying they were unable to sign into their email accounts or access other applications. Downdetector, a website that tracks tech outages, estimated that over 24,000 users faced issues around the peak of the disruption around 9 a.m. ET that day.

The Microsoft 365 Status account on X posted around 10:45 a.m. ET, saying the company had "confirmed that impact has been remediated."

In a series of posts leading up to the resolution, Microsoft said the problems stemmed from a change within a "third-party ISP (internet service provider's) managed-environment."

After the ISP reversed the change, Microsoft reported signs of recovery.

Contributing: Mary Walrath-Holdridge

Natalie Neysa Alund is a senior reporter for USA TODAY. Reach her at nalund@usatoday.com and follow her on X @nataliealund.