Microsoft restores Teams and Exchange after US outage caused by ‘network misconfiguration’

Microsoft has confirmed that a recent disruption affecting its suite of productivity tools has been resolved. The company revealed on its status page that a misconfiguration in part of its North American network infrastructure had caused the issue.

Services affected during outage

On Thursday, users reported difficulties accessing services including Microsoft Teams and Exchange Online. At the height of the outage, thousands of users experienced problems, according to Downdetector, a platform that tracks service disruptions through user reports.

By 5:38 p.m. ET, the number of users reporting issues had fallen to just 136, down from a peak of approximately 17,000. Microsoft noted that Downdetector figures are based on user submissions, meaning the actual number of affected customers may have been higher.

Previous outage linked to undersea cable damage

To recall, Microsoft experienced another significant outage last month as well, though the company confirmed that its Azure cloud services were operating normally following the disruption. The issue, linked to damage to several undersea cables in the Red Sea, had caused concerns over potential service delays for some customers.

The technology giant reported on September 7 that it was no longer detecting problems across its platform. Earlier warnings had indicated that certain users might face higher latency due to the disruption, which primarily affected data traffic moving between Asia and Europe via the Middle East.

While Microsoft did not provide details on how the subsea cables were damaged, it emphasised that its engineering teams had been actively working to reroute traffic and minimise the impact on users. In a prior statement, the company noted that “undersea fibre cuts can take time to repair,” adding that it would continue to monitor, rebalance, and optimise routing to reduce delays and maintain service stability.

The incident highlighted the critical role of undersea infrastructure in global cloud operations and the challenges tech firms face in maintaining uninterrupted service.