On Thursday, a plethora of Microsoft users faced a myriad of issues and outages, with the root of the problem seemingly stemming from its 365 subscription, which encompasses a broad range of essential services, including Outlook, PowerPoint, Word, Excel, and more.

“We’re investigating an issue that may be preventing users from accessing multiple Microsoft 365 services,” the company announced on X. “Please refer to MO888473 in the admin center for further details and updates.”

It transpired that there were problems with the cloud service that provides the 365 services to consumers. A status page from Microsoft indicated “service degradation” that might restrict access to one or more 365 services. The company stated on X: “We’re examining network telemetry and recent changes to our networking infrastructure. Additionally, we’re collaborating with a third-party ISP to identify the underlying cause.”

Reports of issues with Microsoft 365 began emerging around 9 a.m. eastern time on Down Detector, which, full disclosure, is owned by the same parent company as our sister site. The issues seemed to be subsiding by about 10 a.m. eastern.

This problem comes nearly two months after the massive outages from CrowdStrike and Microsoft that disrupted the global landscape, leaving users locked out of essential services.