Microsoft 365 hit by outage, preventing access to emails and files

A significant outage at Microsoft is currently hindering enterprise clients from reaching their email accounts, files, meetings, and a variety of other cloud-based services. The tech giant announced via a post on X around 2:30 p.m. ET that the disruption stems from issues with a segment of its service infrastructure in North America, which is failing to process traffic as anticipated. While Microsoft has not disclosed detailed information regarding the underlying cause of the outage, the company confirmed that it is actively working to restore the affected infrastructure to ensure full recovery. According to updates on its status page, the outage is impacting multiple services, notably Exchange Online for email, the ability to search through files in SharePoint Online or OneDrive, and functionalities related to Teams, such as initiating chats, scheduling meetings, or adding participants. Additionally, administrators are facing challenges accessing Microsoft Purview and Defender XDR security dashboards, along with their respective admin centers. As we await further information from Microsoft, our attempts to reach out for comments have been delayed due to the ongoing email service disruption, which is hosted on their platform.