Microsoft is currently grappling with a significant service disruption that has left thousands of users unable to access key productivity platforms, including Office.com and the company’s AI-powered Copilot assistant. The outage, which began in the early morning hours of August 20, 2025, has primarily impacted customers across North America, though the full scope of the incident remains under investigation.
Service Disruption Details
The technical issues surfaced approximately two hours before 10:17 AM Central Daylight Time, creating widespread access problems for business and individual users. Affected customers are experiencing a range of connectivity issues, including server connection failures when attempting to reach Office.com, authentication difficulties preventing successful login attempts, and severely limited access to Microsoft Copilot through standard channels.
Microsoft has acknowledged that the impact is concentrated among users trying to access Office.com and m365.cloud.microsoft, with the majority of service reports originating from the North American region. However, company representatives emphasize that their technical teams are still working to determine the complete extent of the disruption.
Corporate Response and Resolution Efforts
The technology giant has elevated this incident to critical status, assigning it the tracking number MO1138499 within the Microsoft 365 Admin Center. This classification reflects the severity of the outage and the priority being placed on restoration efforts.
Microsoft’s engineering teams are pursuing multiple investigative approaches to identify and resolve the root cause. Technical staff are actively collecting comprehensive telemetry data from affected systems, conducting detailed reviews of service telemetry from components that support Office.com functionality, and working to reproduce the issue within internal testing environments to gather additional network diagnostic information.
Available Alternatives
While the primary Office.com portal remains compromised, Microsoft has identified several alternative pathways for users seeking to access Copilot functionality. These workarounds include accessing the service through copilot.microsoft.com, utilizing the Microsoft Copilot feature within the Microsoft 365 mobile application, and leveraging Copilot capabilities embedded within other Microsoft 365 applications, including Microsoft Teams and various Office applications.
Pattern of Recent Disruptions
This latest incident adds to a series of service interruptions that have affected Microsoft’s cloud-based productivity suite in recent months. Earlier this week, the company addressed separate connectivity problems impacting Microsoft Teams desktop and web applications. Additionally, approximately two months ago, Microsoft resolved authentication-related issues that specifically affected customers in the Europe, Middle East, Africa, and Asia Pacific regions.
