A global service outage has temporarily severed Microsoft 365 Family subscribers from the Office suite. Microsoft is aware of the issue, but it may take a few hours for the company to push a fix.

Frustrated customers flooded to the Microsoft support forum in the early hours of April 10th. They were all met with the same notice after attempting to access Office services: “Your Microsoft 365 Family Subscription has expired.” Some customers say that all of the accounts on their Family plan are locked out, while others say that only sub-accounts are affected.

Notably, this problem is not limited to web-based M365 services—it also impacts local app installations. And customers cannot resolve the issue on their own. Microsoft confirms that it’s experiencing a service outage that directly affects Microsoft 365 Family accounts, and it’s currently investigating the source of the problem.

Here’s what the Microsoft Service Health page says as of 10 AM ET:

Title: Some users may be unable to access Microsoft 365 services

User impact: Users with Microsoft 365 Family subscriptions may be unable to access Microsoft 365 services.

Current status: We’re reviewing service telemetry and recent changes within the service to isolate the source of the issue.

Next update by: Thursday, April 10, 2025, at 3:30 PM UTC

If the last part of this notice is accurate, then Microsoft won’t provide an update until 3:30 PM UTC (11:30 AM ET). Its unclear whether the company expects to fix the issue before or after that time—the “next update by” field does not indicate a service outage’s expected time frame, it’s just a courtesy for customers who are keeping an eye on the situation.

Like all Microsoft service outages, this M365 Family kerfuffle has a huge impact on businesses. There aren’t too many corporations using Family subscriptions (for obvious reasons), but a ton of small businesses, freelancers, and contractors use M365 Family for professional purposes. And because this is a weekday, a lot of students will be affected, too (students who roll out of after Microsoft fixes the problem will be fine—sometimes it’s good to sleep in late).

As for why a cloud service outage has any impact on local app isntallations—that’s just the world we live in. Those who want to use the Office suite without being tethered to an online service should buy the Office 2024 bundle. Alternatives like LibreOffice and OfficeSuite are also worth considering.

Microsoft 365 Family customers who are affected by this outage have no choice but to sit back and wait. Don’t fuss with your Family subscription, as it’s up to Microsoft to fix the service outage. If you can get some work done in the free web-based version of Excel, Word, or another Office app, then go for it.

Source: Microsoft via The Register