Microsoft has confirmed it is actively investigating a new service incident affecting multiple core services within the Microsoft 365 ecosystem.
The company acknowledged the disruption on Wednesday evening, following reports of connectivity issues and service degradation for users relying on its cloud-based productivity tools.
The incident, tracked under Issue ID MO1220495, officially began on January 21, 2026, at 10:15 PM IST. While the full scope of the disruption is still being determined, Microsoft has listed three primary services as “Affected”: Exchange Online, Microsoft Teams, and the broader Microsoft 365 suite.
This disruption poses a significant challenge for enterprise users, as Exchange Online and Teams are critical components of daily business communication.
Users attempting to access emails, join meetings, or use collaboration tools within the suite may experience intermittent failures, latency, or an inability to sign in.
According to the latest status update provided at 10:37 PM IST, Microsoft engineers are currently in the diagnostic phase. The status remains listed as “Investigating,” indicating that the root cause has not yet been isolated or remediated.
Microsoft has not yet released specific details on the “Scope of impact,” so it is unclear whether this is a global outage or limited to specific geographic regions.
IT administrators are advised to check the Service Health Dashboard (SHD) in the Microsoft 365 admin center for granular details relevant to their specific tenant.
The company has committed to providing regular updates as the investigation proceeds. As of the last communication, the situation is developing, and no estimated time for resolution (ETR) has been provided.
Organizations relying on these services should prepare for potential workflow interruptions and monitor official Microsoft channels for the next scheduled update.
Update 1[11:11 pm IST]: In a statement released shortly after the incident began, Microsoft provided specific insight into the source of the disruption. “Our investigation indicates a possible third-party networking issue may be affecting access to Microsoft 365 services, including Teams and Outlook for some users,” the company stated.
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