Microsoft has confirmed and resolved a widespread Microsoft 365 outage that temporarily blocked access to key services including Microsoft Teams, Exchange Online, and the Microsoft 365 admin center. The disruption, which impacted businesses and organizations worldwide, raised concerns about service reliability and highlighted how quickly these outages can ripple across workplaces dependent on Microsoft’s cloud infrastructure.
The incident, first reported by users struggling to sign in, was tracked under incident code MO1168102 in Microsoft’s Service Health Dashboard. Impacted users saw error messages when attempting to log into services and also experienced failures with Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) and Microsoft Entra single sign-on (SSO) systems. This prevented many from accessing their accounts entirely, causing significant workplace disruptions.
We’re investigating reports of issues accessing Microsoft 365 services and the Microsoft 365 admin center. More details can be found in the Service Health Dashboard under MO1168102 or https://t.co/ehoQShPjzB.
— Microsoft 365 Status (@MSFT365Status) October 8, 2025
What Microsoft Said
In its updates, Microsoft acknowledged that users were unable to authenticate into Microsoft 365 services. Some users received the error: “We are sorry, something went wrong. Please try refreshing the page in a few minutes.” Others reported not receiving MFA prompts, which effectively locked them out of their accounts.
Engineers identified that the disruption was linked to a directory operations issue within dependent service infrastructure. To mitigate the problem, Microsoft began rebalancing traffic across its network, which gradually restored access to services. After several hours of monitoring, Microsoft confirmed that the issue was fully mitigated and normal functionality resumed across Teams, Exchange Online, and other affected apps.
We’re rebalancing traffic across affected infrastructure as a mitigation action to provide relief to affected users and we’re subsequently observing improvements in the service. More details can be found in the Service Health Dashboard under MO1168102 or https://t.co/ehoQShPjzB.
— Microsoft 365 Status (@MSFT365Status) October 8, 2025
Global Impact
Although Microsoft has not published a full list of affected regions, reports on social media and IT forums indicated that North America, Europe, and parts of Asia experienced widespread disruptions. Companies dependent on Microsoft Teams for collaboration and Exchange Online for email experienced immediate slowdowns in business operations.
This is not the first time Microsoft 365 has suffered large-scale downtime. In July, admins across North America were unable to access the admin center, and in January, a separate outage blocked MFA verification for Office apps. More recently, Office.com and Microsoft’s AI-powered Copilot assistant were affected by regional disruptions.
Our traffic rebalancing efforts were successful in mitigating this issue. We’ve confirmed after a period of monitoring that the impact is no longer occurring. More details can be found in the Service Health Dashboard under MO1168102 or https://t.co/ehoQShPjzB.
— Microsoft 365 Status (@MSFT365Status) October 8, 2025
Why It Matters
The outage underscores the risks of cloud dependency for businesses. With Microsoft 365 powering communication, scheduling, document collaboration, and email for millions of organizations, even short disruptions can cascade into lost productivity, delayed projects, and frustrated users. In highly regulated industries, service failures also raise compliance concerns, particularly when MFA and security tools fail alongside productivity services.
Cybersecurity experts also note that outages affecting identity and authentication systems can make it difficult to distinguish between service failures and potential cyberattacks. This further complicates incident response planning for organizations relying exclusively on Microsoft’s cloud ecosystem.
What Comes Next
For now, Microsoft has confirmed that the Microsoft 365 outage has been resolved. All affected services, including Teams, Exchange Online, and the Microsoft 365 admin center, are operational once again. However, IT teams worldwide are calling for more transparency on root causes and safeguards to prevent similar incidents in the future.
As companies continue migrating workloads to the cloud, reliability and uptime guarantees from providers like Microsoft remain critical. Today’s outage may serve as a reminder for businesses to implement redundancy plans, including backup communication systems, to mitigate the impact of future disruptions.
This is a developing story, and further updates may be provided if Microsoft discloses more about the root cause or long-term preventive measures.
