Top M365 Issues & How to Troubleshoot Them

Formerly known as Office 365, Microsoft 365 is a subscription-based service from Microsoft. It includes regular updates and new features for the popular Office productivity and collaboration apps, such as Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, Word, Teams, and more. Despite the relatively high stability of M365’s applications, there have been some known bugs and other issues. Let’s take a look at some of the common problems with M365 and how to solve them.

Microsoft 365 Synchronization Issues

With so many applications included in Microsoft Office 365, there are bound to be some synchronization issues between them. Some users have reported missing files when opening the main page. This is most commonly reported by mobile app users and is unlikely to happen with the Office desktop version. Syncing issues indicate that a file did not upload correctly to OneDrive. Try turning your device off and on again. Then, check your internet connection. It is also possible to work around this issue by logging into OneDrive on a desktop browser and dragging your file(s) into the documents folder.

Microsoft 365 Sign-in Issues

To say that a problem signing in to M365 is frustrating is probably an understatement. If you receive an error message, or an unrecognized user ID or password message, confirm that you are entering the correct user ID and password. If you’re confident that you have the right credentials, check with a system administrator to see if the credentials were changed. Business or school account users can visit the Microsoft password reset page. Personal account users can visit this password recovery page by entering their email, phone, or Skype name.

Microsoft 365 Troubleshooting Tools

Many of the issues experienced by M365 subscribers can be diagnosed and solved through the Microsoft Support and Recovery Assistant. This program runs tests on Office, Microsoft 365, and Outlook, to determine problems and offer solutions. If this download cannot fix the problem you’re encountering, it will either provide you additional steps, or help you contact Microsoft support. If you are an Enterprise customer, the Support and Recovery Assistant can now be used in a command line or a PowerShell script. Visit this Microsoft doc for help using the command-line version of Microsoft Support and Recovery Assistant.

Microsoft is usually aware of the challenges and problems that M365 users experience. Many of the periodic updates fix these common issues. If you’re experiencing problems on the current M365 channel, the release notes on Microsoft Docs can be helpful, as they detail the current channel updates and fixes for each of the Microsoft Office apps.