Problems are stacking up for Microsoft this month, with each new day bringing yet another issue for the company. After users were hit by disastrous KB5074109 and KB5073455 updates that broke numerous services, there's another disruption today. This time, Microsoft 365 services, including Outlook, Microsoft Defender, and Microsoft Purview, are experiencing an outage.
Microsoft confirmed on X that its engineers had identified a portion of service infrastructure in North America that wasn't processing traffic correctly.
We're investigating a potential issue impacting multiple Microsoft 365 services, including Outlook, Microsoft Defender and Microsoft Purview. Further information can be found in the admin center under MO1221364.
— Microsoft 365 Status (@MSFT365Status) January 22, 2026
Outage trackers like Downdetector showed thousands of reports, with spikes in Outlook and broader Microsoft 365 complaints. This marks the second consecutive day of notable issues for Microsoft's cloud productivity suite in 2026.
Microsoft Service Health Status also points out that Microsoft 365 is experiencing service degradation:
Users may be receiving a "451 4.3.2 temporary server issue" error message when attempting to send or receive email through Outlook.
Some of the impacted service functions include, but may not be limited to:
- Sending and receiving email through Exchange Online, including notification emails from Microsoft Viva Engage.
- Accessing the service portals, including Microsoft Purview, Microsoft Defender XDR, and the Microsoft 365 admin center.
Current status: We've identified a portion of dependent service infrastructure in the North America region that is not processing traffic as expected. This is impacting our load balancing processes and general service availability. We're working to restore this infrastructure to a heathy state and rebalance the service traffic to achieve recovery.
Scope of impact: Any users served through an affected section of service infrastructure in the North America region may be intermittently impacted.
Next update by: Thursday, January 22, 2026, at 10:00 PM UTC
Microsoft says its developers are actively working to restore Microsoft 365 services to a healthy state.
You can track new updates on the situation via Microsoft Service Health Status.
Update: Microsoft has resolved the infrastructure issue and servers went back online on January 22 at 10:30 PM PST.
We've confirmed that impact has been resolved. Full details can be found under MO1221364 within your Microsoft 365 admin center.
— Microsoft 365 Status (@MSFT365Status) January 23, 2026
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