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Microsoft Deploys Phased Fix After Global Exchange Online Outage

The company identified an authentication fault and is testing a server-side mitigation on part of its cloud to try to restore email access for millions of users.

Overview

  • The incident was logged in the Microsoft 365 Admin Center as EX1464935 and began at 17:53 MESZ on Monday, when users worldwide started reporting login failures and mail send/receive errors.
  • Microsoft traced the disruption to a central authentication and connection component inside Exchange Online and developed a mitigation that technicians are testing on a subset of servers.
  • Engineers have begun a gradual rollout of the update to affected servers while continuing diagnostics, so service restoration will proceed in phases rather than all at once.
  • Users reported tens of thousands of outage complaints on monitoring sites and experienced mailbox sync failures, frozen clients, and problems in admin consoles; experts advise not to change local settings or repeatedly resend messages to avoid duplicates.
  • Exchange Online is a core email service for businesses and consumers, so continued disruption could delay business workflows and administrative tasks until the phased fix completes and is verified.