Microsoft is currently investigating a critical global outage preventing administrators from accessing the Exchange Admin Center (EAC). The issue, tracked under reference number EX1051697 in the Microsoft 365 Admin Center, began approximately two hours ago and is affecting IT administrators worldwide.

## Impact and Symptoms

Affected administrators report receiving “HTTP Error 500” messages when attempting to log into the Exchange admin center portal. The outage appears to be widespread, with Microsoft confirming it “appears to be a global issue.”

## Temporary Workaround

Microsoft has identified that some administrators have successfully accessed the admin center using an alternative URL: https://admin.cloud.microsoft/exchange#/

In a recent update, the company has begun automatically redirecting users to this working URL as a temporary solution while they address the underlying problem.

## Troubleshooting Progress

Microsoft engineers have:
– Identified increases in error spikes
– Reproduced the issue internally
– Collected additional diagnostic data
– Identified a potential authentication issue in a specific URL path
– Implemented traffic redirection as a mitigation strategy

“We’ve identified a potential authentication issue in a specific URL path and are working to mitigate the issue by re-directing the impacted URL traffic to a working URL,” Microsoft stated in their latest update.

## Recent Exchange Online Issues

This outage follows several recent Exchange Online service disruptions, including:
– An outage last month that prevented Outlook web users from accessing Exchange Online mailboxes
– A week-long Exchange Online problem causing delays and failures in email delivery

Microsoft continues to work on resolving the current EAC access issue and will provide updates through the Microsoft 365 Admin Center.