Microsoft Outlook and Teams outage continues into Friday, frustrating users worldwide
Microsoft is currently navigating a bumpy start to 2026 as a major service outage leaves thousands of users staring at blank loading screens.
The disruption, which began late yesterday and peaked this morning, has primarily paralyzed Outlook, Teams, and critical admin tools across North America.
Technical teams have traced the root cause to a “service infrastructure issue,” where a failure in load balancing meant servers simply stopped processing incoming traffic.
While some users are seeing a slow return to normalcy, many are still facing the dreaded “451 4.3.2” error code when trying to send time-sensitive emails.
This isn’t an isolated incident; it’s actually the second time this week Microsoft has struggled, following a separate networking glitch that hit on January 21.
For those in the IT trenches, the incident is being tracked under ID MO1221364, with engineers currently “rebalancing traffic” to restore full connectivity.
While the tech giant works on a permanent fix, the silver lining is a rare, quiet morning for anyone whose workflow relies entirely on the Microsoft ecosystem.
If your inbox is still frozen, your best bet is to keep an eye on the official Microsoft 365 Status page for the green light to get back to work.
