Action Needed: Stanford Emails, Meeting Invites Affected by Microsoft 365 Outage

On Thursday, Jan. 22, 2026, Microsoft reported a widespread outage affecting Microsoft 365 services hosted on portions of its North America infrastructure. This outage affected Stanford as well as other institutions. 

Based on Microsoft’s reports, email messages, calendar invites, and responses sent to and from Microsoft accounts between 11 a.m. and 9 p.m. PST on Thursday, Jan. 22, are lost and will need to be re-sent. Emails sent from the ServiceNow system to a Stanford address during that timeframe were also impacted and will need to be re-sent.

How to take action on email 

Outgoing email 

In your folders pane, review your Sent or Sent Items folder for any messages sent between 11 a.m. and 9 p.m. on Thursday, and re-send them. 

• Resend an email message in Outlook - Microsoft Support
• Resend emails in Mail on Mac 

Incoming email 

For any expected emails from Thursday, contact the sender and ask them to re-send the message. We do not expect additional deliveries of emails from that timeframe. 

How to take action on calendar invites 

Calendar invites and responses sent between 11 a.m. and 9 p.m. on Thursday will need to be re-sent, even if they appear correctly in the calendar. 

Send invites again 

If you have sent an invite, it will appear on your calendar but not on your recipients. To send it again, forward the meeting invite to the original invitees. 

Re-notify invitees about canceled meetings 

• If you have cancelled an invite that was sent before the outage, it will show as cancelled for you, but will still appear on your invitees’ calendars.
• To notify invitees that the meeting has been cancelled, look for the cancellation email in your Sent or Sent Items folder.
• Hit “Reply-all” to let them know the meeting is cancelled and they can remove it from their calendar. 

Accept or respond tentative to invites again 

• If you have accepted or replied tentative to an invitation, the invite should still be visible on your calendar.
• Click “Change RSVP” or “Edit RSVP” and then reply again. 

Decline meeting invites again 

• If you have declined an invitation the calendar invite may not be visible.
• Look for the declined invite in your Deleted Items or Trash folder.
• Once you find and click on the email to open it, you should be able to interact with it as you would in your regular Inbox.
• Learn how to show a declined meeting on your calendar in Outlook.
• To show declined meetings on your Mac Calendar: Click View in the menu bar and select Show Declined Events.