Microsoft 365 Email Down Already in 2026

This year, it looks like we're getting Microsoft 364.

On January 22nd, a large number of businesses dependent on Microsoft 365 email experienced over 9 hours of downtime (reference). Microsoft made a mistake we'll never know the exact details of, and countless emails sent to 365 subscribers were bounced back to their senders.

Summary of the event from Microsoft below.

Users may be seeing degraded service functionality or be unable to access multiple Microsoft 365 services
Issue ID: MO1221364
Affected services: Microsoft 365 suite
User impact: Users may have seen degraded service functionality or were unable to access multiple Microsoft 365 services.
Start time Jan 22, 2026, 12:33 PM MST
End time Jan 22, 2026, 10:00 PM MST

How did this impact businesses?

• Important emails from clients, prospective clients, and vendors were mostly not received for nine hours on a business day.
• However, many businesses also use Microsoft 365 and were experiencing the same interruption as you. You can't email them, they can't email you, we're back to the Stone Age together.
• For those who had email continuity solutions in place for exactly this scenario, it wasn't entirely smooth either.
  • Email continuity solutions sit between Microsoft 365 and the internet and should hold emails in a temporary space until Microsoft 365 services are restored. In some of the best continuity solutions, your staff can log in to a portal and view email even when Microsoft 365 is down.
  • The way Microsoft 365 failed was unusual, confusing these solutions to not flag Microsoft 365 as down at first.
  • Some continuity solutions crashed under the load. Microsoft exceeded its SLA downtime allowance for an entire year in just one day (99.9% uptime, 44 minutes/month allowance).
  • Staff had no clue they had an email continuity solution available to them because Microsoft 365 hasn't been down this hard in years.

What are the lessons learned for businesses that use Microsoft 365?

• This is why Business Continuity Plans (BCP) exist. Depending on how your company dealt with this recent event, it may be time to revise your BCP if email communication is critical to your business operations.
• If you don't have an email continuity solution in place, we recommend considering one. Please note that they aren't bulletproof; however, we believe they will be improved after this recent event.
• If you do have an email continuity solution in place, make sure your staff know how to use it. It should be documented in your BCP.
  
  • A good BCP should include a plan for alerting your staff to use this solution that isn't email (since email is down in this example). It could be a Teams message, your IT company could send a pop-up message to all your workstations, or you could use an external communications tool that emails or texts your staff at their personal email or cell phone.

Please reach out to us if you have any questions.