Microsoft Teams Outage Disrupts Communication for Users Across US and Europe

Microsoft Teams users across the United States and Europe are experiencing significant service disruptions today, with the tech giant confirming multiple ongoing incidents affecting core functionality of the popular collaboration platform.

Service Degradation Affects Core Features

The outage, tracked under incident code TM1233974, is causing delays and failures when users attempt to send and receive chat messages containing inline media such as images, code snippets, and videos. According to Microsoft's incident report, the impact is specifically affecting users in Europe and the United States who are served through the affected infrastructure.

"Users may experience delays and failures when sending and receiving chat messages that include inline media (images, code snippets, videos)," Microsoft stated in their official incident report. The company has classified this as a "service degradation" event, indicating that while the service remains partially operational, user experience is significantly impacted.

Multiple Concurrent Issues

Beyond the chat message problems, Microsoft is simultaneously addressing two additional critical incidents:

• TM1231009: Users unable to join some Microsoft Teams meetings via the "Join" button in meeting chat
• TM1218513: Issues preventing users from adding or updating Copilot Studio agents to Microsoft Teams

These concurrent outages highlight the complexity of maintaining enterprise-scale communication infrastructure that serves hundreds of millions of users globally.

Scale of Impact

While Microsoft has not disclosed the exact number of affected users, the company's massive user base makes any service disruption particularly significant. As revealed at the 2024 Enterprise Connect conference, Microsoft Teams boasts over 320 million monthly active users, making it one of the world's most widely adopted collaboration platforms.

Historical Context

This outage follows a pattern of recent service disruptions affecting Microsoft's cloud infrastructure. In early October 2025, multiple Microsoft 365 services, including Teams, experienced a critical outage that also caused Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) issues. That incident affected users attempting to access Microsoft 365 services via Microsoft Entra single sign-on (SSO).

The recurrence of such incidents raises questions about the resilience of cloud-based communication platforms and the challenges of maintaining service reliability at massive scale.

Technical Response

Microsoft's engineering teams are currently reviewing service monitoring telemetry data to isolate the root cause of the current incidents and develop remediation plans. This diagnostic process is crucial for understanding whether the issues stem from infrastructure problems, software bugs, or external factors affecting the service delivery network.

User Impact and Workarounds

For users experiencing these issues, the impact varies depending on their location and specific use case. Those primarily using Teams for text-based communication may experience fewer disruptions, while users relying on rich media sharing or meeting functionality face more significant challenges.

Organizations affected by the outage may need to consider temporary workarounds, such as:

• Using alternative communication channels for critical messages
• Scheduling meetings through different platforms when possible
• Avoiding reliance on inline media in chat messages until the issue is resolved

Industry Implications

The timing of this outage is particularly noteworthy given the increasing reliance on remote collaboration tools in today's hybrid work environment. As organizations continue to depend heavily on platforms like Microsoft Teams for daily operations, service reliability becomes a critical business continuity concern.

This incident serves as a reminder of the importance of having contingency plans for communication infrastructure and the potential business impact of cloud service disruptions.

Looking Forward

As Microsoft works to resolve these issues, users and IT administrators will be watching closely for updates on resolution timelines and root cause analysis. The company's response to this incident may influence how organizations evaluate their dependence on single-vendor communication platforms and their approach to redundancy in critical business systems.

This is a developing story, and updates will be provided as Microsoft releases additional information about the resolution progress and underlying causes of these service disruptions.