Microsoft 365 users around the world have been experiencing a widespread service outage affecting several of the company’s major workplace applications. The incident impacted services including Microsoft Teams, Exchange Online, OneDrive, SharePoint Online, and Microsoft 365 Copilot, leaving many users unable to access essential tools.
The outage entered its second day on September 1, with users reporting problems ranging from login failures to missing features and connectivity issues. According to Downdetector data, around 35% of reported problems involved the Microsoft 365 app, while another 35% involved login issues. Nearly 18% of reports concerned difficulties accessing the website.
Microsoft acknowledged the disruption and said it is investigating the issue through service telemetry and diagnostic data. The company identified a problem involving a core authentication configuration used across multiple Microsoft 365 services. According to Microsoft, the authentication issue caused a range of functional problems rather than taking every service completely offline.
Microsoft said it has been applying a targeted fix across the remaining affected infrastructure. Recovery indicators have reportedly been improving, although the company continues to monitor the services to ensure that the improvements remain stable.
The impact spread across several widely used workplace applications. Microsoft Teams users faced issues with search and calendar synchronization. Presence indicators may also fail to update correctly, while some location-related functions can generate errors.
For OneDrive for Business and SharePoint Online, users have reported partial page-loading problems, timeouts, repeated retries and outdated information. Search, recent documents, account summaries and shared folders have also been affected.
Exchange Online, Microsoft's email service, has experienced particularly serious disruption. Users have reported connection failures across different access methods, while enterprise email search has also been unavailable in affected scenarios.
Microsoft 365 Copilot has also been affected. Prompts that require access to organizational data through Microsoft 365 grounding may fail to process while the underlying services remain disrupted.
Some users described their frustration in comments, saying, “Working fine here with my company, I am the sys admin and let me tell you the amount of angry calls and texts I received..Microsoft- it’s not a bug; it’s a new feature. :-)”
Another user said, “I’ve had it. I spent the evening transitioning over to Apple Mail and Calendar, which I haven’t used in a while. Seems to work fine. Outlook gets worse and clunkier and buggier and I just don’t need the agita… buh bye, Microsoft!”
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Microsoft said that availability is improving as the authentication-related fix is deployed. The company continues to validate connectivity, authentication, and search functions while maintaining extended monitoring.
The outage highlights how heavily businesses rely on cloud-based productivity platforms for everyday communication, email, file access, and collaboration. When several connected services experience a common technical problem, the disruption can quickly spread across different parts of an organization.
For now, Microsoft users are advised to monitor the company’s service updates while recovery work continues. Microsoft has not indicated that all affected services have fully returned to normal, but its latest update suggests that the situation is moving towards recovery.