How long will it be before Microsoft is up

There is no confirmed universal restoration time for Outlook or Exchange Online; your organization’s administrator should monitor the tenant-specific incident in the Microsoft 365 Service health dashboard for Microsoft’s latest progress and any available estimate.

Check the incident and restoration updates

1. Sign in to the Microsoft 365 admin center with a Global Administrator, Service Support Administrator, or Helpdesk Administrator account.
2. Go to Health → Service health.
3. Under Active issues Microsoft is working on, select the Outlook or Exchange Online incident.
4. Review:
   • Status
   • User impact
   • Last updated
   • All updates
   • The next scheduled update or restoration estimate, if Microsoft has supplied one

Microsoft posts investigation, mitigation, recovery, and resolution messages on that incident page. A status of Restoring service means corrective action is being applied; Extended recovery means most service is returning, but recovery across all affected systems will take longer.^1^

Administrators can also open the incident and select Manage notifications for this issue, or configure email alerts through Service health → Customize → Email. Microsoft normally provides service-incident updates hourly unless the incident notice states another cadence.^2^

If the admin center is unavailable

Check the public Microsoft service status page and @MSFT365status on X. These may identify broad incidents, but the tenant’s Service health entry remains the authoritative source for impact and recovery progress.^1^

Because many users across separate organizations are affected, avoid changing Outlook profiles or reinstalling Office until Service health confirms that Exchange Online is healthy. If no incident appears, an administrator should select Report an issue on the Service health page so Microsoft can correlate the report with those from other organizations.

References

1. How to check Microsoft 365 service health
2. Service health and continuity