Microsoft is investigating an ongoing issue that is preventing users from accessing Microsoft 365 apps via the web. The company announced the disruption on its official X (formerly Twitter) account at 1:06 PM UTC, confirming that service monitoring telemetry is being reviewed to pinpoint the root cause. While desktop apps remain functional as a workaround, reports suggest significant impact on users worldwide, including difficulties accessing Outlook and other core Office apps.
The outage, which began escalating earlier today, has affected businesses, schools, and individual users relying on Microsoft 365’s web-based tools like Word, Excel, and Teams. Downdetector data shows a sharp spike in outage reports, peaking at over 270 complaints in the past hour, reflecting the widespread nature of the disruption.
Microsoft 365 is a cloud-based productivity suite utilized by millions globally, including enterprises, schools, and governmental organizations. Its core features include access to Office apps, collaboration tools like Teams, and cloud storage via OneDrive. Outages of this nature disrupt workflows for organizations heavily reliant on its ecosystem, including email communication, document sharing, and remote collaboration.
Users from regions such as South Africa and India have also flagged the issue, with some complaining that the admin center, used by IT administrators to manage Microsoft 365 services, is also inaccessible. This adds another layer of complexity for organizations attempting to troubleshoot internally.
In a follow-up post, Microsoft suggested that users might still access their files and apps through desktop applications, offering a temporary workaround while it works on a remediation plan. However, as highlighted by user feedback, this alternative does not address all needs, particularly for those who exclusively depend on browser-based access.
The company has advised affected users to follow updates on the issue through the admin center under incident ID OO953223—though, ironically, some users report being unable to access this platform.
Until Microsoft resolves the issue, organizations and individual users are encouraged to leverage desktop versions of Microsoft 365 apps where possible. IT teams should monitor updates from Microsoft closely and communicate alternative solutions to employees or users. This marks the second outage in just two weeks, and Microsoft faces increased scrutiny regarding its service reliability for such a widely used platform.
Further updates on the incident will be shared as they become available.
Update 1 – Microsoft has provided the following update on the situation:
We’ve identified a token generation issue which may be contributing towards the impact. We’ve deployed a fix to disable proactive caching, which we believe will resolve the issue. For more information, please refer to OO953223 in the admin center.
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