Microsoft 365 Admin Center Outage Hits North America

Thousands of IT administrators across North America were left scrambling after a Microsoft 365 admin center service outage disrupted the platform’s core management portal, which manages business accounts, users, and services.

Microsoft confirmed the issue on February 10, acknowledging that some business and enterprise customers were unable to sign in, while others experienced slow performance and limited functionality after logging in.

The company classified the problem as a service incident — a designation typically used when there is noticeable customer impact.

What Microsoft Says So Far

In an official update, Microsoft said:

“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.”

Initial reports indicate the issue is concentrated in North America, though Microsoft has not disclosed how many organizations are affected.

Outage tracking website DownDetector showed thousands of user reports, including complaints about login failures, connection problems, and an extremely slow admin portal.

Microsoft later confirmed that the disruption also affected the Microsoft 365 (M365) app, restricting alternative ways for administrators to monitor services or submit support tickets. The company is now collecting telemetry data to identify 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 added.

“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.

A Familiar Pattern

This incident follows several high-profile Microsoft 365 disruptions in recent years. More than a year ago, Microsoft resolved a critical service issue that blocked login attempts and prevented access to Microsoft 365 services and the admin center.

Further, in July 2025, the company mitigated another outage that triggered “Runtime Error” messages, again locking users out of the portal.

Over the weekend, Microsoft also restored Microsoft Store and Windows Update services following a data center power outage that caused installation failures and update timeouts.

For many IT professionals who rely heavily on Microsoft’s cloud ecosystem, repeated disruptions are starting to feel less like rare incidents and more like recurring calendar events.

Investigation Ongoing

Microsoft has not yet provided technical specifics or an estimated timeline for full resolution. The company says it will continue posting updates through its official service health channels as engineers work to isolate and fix the issue.

Until full functionality is restored, thousands of IT administrators remain partially or completely locked out of the very system designed to keep their organizations running smoothly.

This is a developing story and will be updated as more information becomes available.