Microsoft 365 outage takes down admin center in North America

Source: Bleeping Computer

Overview

Microsoft is investigating an outage that blocks some administrators with business or enterprise subscriptions from accessing the Microsoft 365 admin center. The company has not disclosed which specific regions are affected, but it is tracking the issue on its official service‑health status page to keep impacted organizations informed.

“Some users in the North America region may be unable to access the Microsoft 365 admin center. We’re reviewing service monitoring telemetry to isolate the root cause and develop a remediation plan,” Microsoft said when it acknowledged the issue.
— Microsoft status page

“Initial reports indicate that the issue is occurring in the North America regions. We’ll provide more information once identified.”

Impact on Users

Although Microsoft has not revealed how many customers are affected, the incident has been classified as an incident, which typically signifies noticeable user impact.

• Thousands of customers have reported problems on DownDetector, including connection issues and an extremely slow admin portal.
  (Source: DownDetector – Microsoft 365 status)

Microsoft Updates

In a follow‑up to the original incident report, Microsoft added that the outage also affects the M365 app and that telemetry data is being collected to pinpoint the root cause.

“Users able to access the admin center may be experiencing degraded functionality. As functionality is degraded, users may be unable to raise support tickets through the Microsoft 365 admin center. Additionally, users may be unable to access the M365 app,” Microsoft noted.

“We’re continuing to analyze diagnostic data from the Microsoft 365 admin center infrastructure, with a current focus on usage patterns and Central Processing Unit (CPU) utilization levels. Additionally, we’re reviewing HTTP Archive (HAR) files provided by impacted users to support our investigation.”

Historical Context

• January 2025: Microsoft addressed another critical service issue that blocked login attempts and prevented users and administrators from accessing Microsoft 365 services and the admin center.
  (Reference: Bleeping Computer – January incident)

• July 2025: A similar outage triggered “Runtime Error” messages, preventing access to the admin portal.
  (Reference: Bleeping Computer – July incident)

Related Restorations

Over the weekend, Microsoft restored Microsoft Store and Windows Update services that had been taken down after a data‑center power outage, which had caused failures or timeouts when installing or updating Store apps and downloading Windows updates.
(Reference: Microsoft Docs – Windows Message Center)

This is a developing story …