Microsoft M365 service issues

*As of 12:27am, Microsoft reports this issue closed.*

Microsoft has reported infrastructure issues with M365. For up to date information from Microsoft, please visit this site: https://status.cloud.microsoft/m365/

Users may be seeing degraded service functionality or be unable to access multiple Microsoft 365 services.

Some of the impacted service functions include, but may not be limited to:
– Sending and receiving email through Exchange Online, including notification emails from Microsoft Viva Engage.
– 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.
– Receiving presence or location information in Microsoft Teams.
– Applying and managing sensitivity labels, interactive operations on reports, and artifacts with sensitivity labels in Microsoft Fabric.

Scope of impact: Any users served through an affected section of service infrastructure in the North America region may be intermittently impacted.
Root cause: A portion of dependent service infrastructure in the North America region isn’t processing traffic as expected.

Emails sent to from outside of Microsoft may be delayed in their delivery. This includes relayed email. Microsoft is aware of the issue and working on a resolution.

01/22/2026 4:00 PM - Microsoft reports: Current status: While we’ve restored the affected infrastructure to a heathy state, further load balancing is required to mitigate persistent impact. We’ve identified and are implementing additional actions to direct requests and traffic to additional healthy sections of infrastructure to achieve withstanding recovery.

01/22/2026 5:30 PM - Microsoft reports: During our ongoing efforts to rebalance traffic across the region, we introduced a targeted load balancing configuration change intended to expedite the recovery process, which incidentally introduced additional traffic imbalances associated with persistent impact for a portion of the affected infrastructure. We’re remedying our load balancing configurations while, in parallel, reviewing the viability of expediting our ongoing incremental rebalancing and recovery efforts.

01/22/2026 8:00 PM - Microsoft reports: We’re continuing to refine our load balancing configurations to remedy residual imbalances across the environment and further our ongoing recovery efforts.

01/23/2026 7:00 AM - Microsoft reports: We’ve confirmed that the affected infrastructure has returned to a healthy state and is operating as expected. We’ll continue to closely monitor the remediation actions taken and make any necessary adjustments to maintain stability. If users experience any residual issues, clearing local DNS caches or temporarily lowering DNS TTL values may help ensure a quicker remediation.