Microsoft outage July 23, 2026: What happened, why, and how services recovered

• Microsoft Teams – degraded chat, images not loading
• Outlook – unable to access email
• SharePoint Online – "Something went wrong" error on file access
• OneDrive – intermittent access
• Microsoft 365 Admin Center – slow or inaccessible
• Copilot Chat – intermittent delays and failures
• Power Automate – flows not loading
• Microsoft Loop – unable to open pages
• Xbox Live – impacted per Downdetector reports
• Microsoft Store – disrupted access

Scope and scale of the disruption

The outage was concentrated in North America, although some reports noted global spillover . At its peak at 11:11 AM ET, Downdetector recorded 2,403 user reports — far above the normal baseline of roughly 29. SharePoint accounted for 78% of all complaints, followed by Excel (11%) and the Admin Center (6%) . Microsoft confirmed that the issue affected users accessing Microsoft 365 "through certain network paths in North America" .

Timeline of events (July 23, 2026)

• ~10:44 AM ET – Outage begins; users lose access to Microsoft 365 services across North America .
• 11:11 AM ET – Downdetector reports a peak of 2,403 incidents .
• 11:37 AM PT (2:37 PM ET) – Microsoft acknowledges the incident in a public post, labels it MO1437424, and says it is investigating .
• Mid-afternoon – Microsoft reroutes traffic for some affected infrastructure; initial telemetry shows partial recovery for some users. However, many remain impacted with no ETA provided. Microsoft warns customers to review their business continuity and disaster recovery plans .
• ~1:55 PM ET – Microsoft says it "may have identified the likely cause" and is deploying mitigation actions, expecting additional information within about 30 minutes .
• ~2:15 PM ET – Microsoft is actively testing a new mitigation to bring services back online .
• Late evening (approx. 8 PM ET onward) – Reports indicate services began recovering. The Azure West US incident was also resolved by approximately 4:29 PM ET .

The separate Azure West US region incident

A concurrent but separate Azure connectivity issue was reported on July 23, 2026 :

• Start time: 14:44 UTC (10:44 AM ET)
• Symptoms: Intermittent connectivity failures, increased latency, or difficulty accessing Azure services in the West US region. Customers with traffic traversing the region could also experience downstream impact.
• Resolution: Marked as resolved by approximately 4:29 PM ET.

It is not clear from published reports whether the Azure West US incident was causally linked to the broader Microsoft 365 outage or was a separate issue that happened at the same time. Both began around the same hour.

Root cause and Microsoft's response

Microsoft identified the likely cause as a recent networking or infrastructure change in Azure that degraded service for certain network paths . The company applied traffic rerouting and then a targeted mitigation after identifying the probable root cause, which appeared to be a configuration/change management issue rather than a security event . Microsoft acknowledged the outage via its Microsoft 365 Status X account and directed administrators to incident MO1437424 in the Admin Center . During the peak of the incident, the company advised customers to review their business continuity and disaster recovery plans .

Resolution

Most Microsoft 365 services recovered later on July 23. The Azure West US incident was also marked resolved. As of the latest available reports, all affected services were operational. Microsoft is expected to publish a post-incident review (PIR) with a detailed root cause analysis, as is standard for major incidents.