Major outages and post-mortemsBackground
Microsoft 365 outage in North America on January 22, 2026 hits email, files and Teams
From about 2:30 p.m. ET on January 22, 2026, Microsoft 365 users in North America had trouble with Exchange Online email, SharePoint and OneDrive file search, and Teams chat and meetings. Microsoft said part of its service infrastructure in North America was not processing traffic as expected. A home internet problem looks the same from your desk, so check the vendor’s status before restarting your router. Published October 6, 2026.
- Event date
- Published here
- Updated
- Source
- TechCrunch
Background itemThis happened 257 days before we published it (more than 90). It is here as context for the guides it links, not as breaking news. Check the source for anything that has changed since.
What changed
On January 22, 2026, Microsoft 365 had an outage affecting users in North America. TechCrunch reported problems starting around 2:30 p.m. ET with:
- Exchange Online email;
- SharePoint Online and OneDrive file search;
- Teams chat, meetings and member management;
- Microsoft Purview and Defender XDR security dashboards, and admin centers.
Microsoft said the cause was “a portion of service infrastructure in North America that is not processing traffic as expected.”
When
- Start: around 2:30 p.m. ET on January 22, 2026.
- End: the coverage we read does not give an end time.
Who is affected and what it means for you
Anyone in North America whose work runs on Microsoft 365 could have been affected, on any internet connection. That means a meeting that won’t join, email that won’t send or arrive, or files that won’t turn up in search.
For Starlink users, the trap is familiar. Calls failing on satellite internet is a real, common problem, and short drops really do freeze Teams calls. So when Teams misbehaves, the dish gets the blame. On January 22 the problem was Microsoft’s. A backup internet line would not have helped, and neither would restarting the dish.
The fastest way to tell: if Teams and Outlook are failing but other sites and apps load normally, and the Starlink app shows no outages, it is almost certainly not your connection.
What you can do now
- Check the Microsoft 365 status page, or ask your IT team; they can see incident details in the admin center.
- Check your link in the Starlink app: outages and latency for the last few hours.
- Have an agreed fallback with your team for long Microsoft outages, such as a phone bridge.
- If your employer pays for your setup, it’s worth agreeing in advance who decides when a problem is “the internet” versus “the service”. Our employer-paid setup guide has a checklist for your IT team.
- Our video calls guide and troubleshooting page cover the call failures that really are on your side.
What stays the same
- Starlink was not involved.
- Teams’ network test thresholds are unchanged: under 100 ms latency, under 30 ms jitter and under 1% loss to pass.
What we don’t know yet
- How long the outage lasted and how many users it hit; TechCrunch didn’t give either.
- Whether Microsoft has published a detailed post-incident report outside its admin center; we couldn’t find a public one.
This item is background: it happened more than 90 days before we published this page.
Source
Microsoft 365 hit by outage, preventing access to emails and files (TechCrunch)
Related guides on this site
Correction log
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