Microsoft 365 outage drags into Friday afternoon: what still works

If your work email still won’t load, it isn’t you. A Microsoft 365 outage that began early on Friday, Australian time, was still unresolved at 1:46pm Perth time (4:46pm in Sydney). That’s according to Microsoft’s status page.

Early signs of recovery haven’t held, SmartCompany reports. Microsoft’s latest update says it is still trying to pinpoint what caused a “traffic influx” and to get the affected back-end servers working again. Its next update is due by 3pm Perth time (6pm in Sydney).

For most offices, Friday afternoon means working around it. Here’s what’s broken and what isn’t.

Email is the problem

The outage centres on Exchange Online, the service behind Microsoft 365 email. Anything that talks to it is affected.

• Outlook: mailboxes may not open in Outlook on the web, the desktop app or phone mail apps.
• Incoming mail: email delivery may be delayed.
• Calendars: scheduling, sending, viewing and editing meetings can fail, especially in Teams.
• Copilot: Copilot Chat may not load or answer, and it may not be able to reach your email, calendar or files.
• To Do and Planner: Microsoft To Do may not load, and Planner tasks are unreliable.
• Printing: Universal Print users may get errors sending print jobs.

As of 12:24pm Perth time, Microsoft’s status page for personal accounts also listed Outlook.com, OneDrive, OneNote, Microsoft To Do, Teams and Microsoft 365 for the web as affected.

What still works

Not everything is down. Microsoft says the parts of its services that don’t depend on Exchange Online keep working.

In Teams, most core features still work: joining calls and meetings, group chats and channel messages. What fails is anything tied to the calendar, creating live or virtual events, and a few extras such as adding contacts. Creating private or shared channels may also fail.

Files stored directly in SharePoint can still be opened. The recent-files list in the Microsoft 365 apps may not show, so go to the SharePoint site instead.

So if you need to reach a colleague, use a Teams chat or call. If you need to reach a customer urgently, pick up the phone rather than relying on an email arriving on time.

Links in email may not open

One security feature is failing in a way staff will notice. Microsoft Defender for Office 365 rewrites links in incoming email through a checking service called Safe Links. Microsoft says those rewritten links currently fail to open.

That’s a safety check failing closed, not a broken email. Don’t go hunting for a way around it. Wait until the service is back, or confirm the link with whoever sent it.

Releasing emails from quarantine may also fail. Some security and compliance tools are affected too, including Defender and Purview, and Intune was intermittently affected.

For whoever looks after your IT

Some pages in the Microsoft 365 admin centre may not load, so check the public status page as well as Service health.

Microsoft says it isn’t aware of any malicious activity behind the outage and will publish a post-incident report once it’s fixed. A fault on Microsoft’s side won’t be fixed by resetting passwords or rebuilding Outlook profiles.

A long outage is also a good prompt to check what you’d do if your data, not just your access, went missing. Our guide to backing up Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace covers that.

Checklist

• Check Microsoft’s status page first. Go to status.cloud.microsoft before you change any settings, passwords or Outlook profiles.
• Move urgent conversations to Teams chat or calls. Teams calls, meetings, group chats and channel messages mostly still work during this outage.
• Phone customers about anything time-critical. Email to and from Microsoft 365 mailboxes may be delayed until the outage is fixed.
• Open shared files from SharePoint directly. Files stored in SharePoint can still be opened even if the recent-files list is empty.
• Don’t try to get around links that won’t open. Safe Links checks are failing; wait, or confirm the link with the sender.
• Check meeting invites after recovery. Invites and edits made during the outage may not have gone through, so confirm they arrived before re-sending.
• Ask your IT provider to review the post-incident report. Microsoft will publish one covering the cause and its fixes once the outage is resolved.