Microsoft 365 outage hits Teams and Outlook across North America

A major service outage hit Microsoft 365 on Thursday, October 9, preventing users from accessing the admin center and services relying on Microsoft Entra ID for authentication. User-reported issues on Downdetector peaked at about 17,000 before falling as remediation progressed by ~5:38 p.m. ET.

Microsoft said a portion of its network infrastructure in North America was misconfigured, which caused the Microsoft 365 disruption. The disruption affected multiple Microsoft 365 services, including Teams, Exchange Online, Outlook, and SharePoint.

For IT administrators, the inability to access the admin center presented a significant challenge, preventing them from managing their environment or troubleshooting user-facing issues.

Recovery came in stages. Microsoft said it rebalanced traffic to healthy infrastructure to restore Microsoft 365 access, and services recovered by late afternoon ET.