500 Internal Server Error "generalException" on /items/delta API

Question

Starting around February 10, 2026, our service began receiving 500 Internal Server Error with the message General exception while processing when calling the Microsoft Graph Delta API for List Items. This issue is happening globally across different Microsoft 365 tenants located in the United States, Europe, and Taiwan.

API Endpoint: GET https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/sites/{site-id}/lists/{list-id}/items/delta

Full JSON Response:

{
  "error": {
    "code": "generalException",
    "message": "General exception while processing",
    "innerError": {
      "date": "2026-02-24T09:23:41",
      "request-id": "df0c1913-0f2b-4f7b-9f20-a2308d280a5d",
      "client-request-id": "df0c1913-0f2b-4f7b-9f20-a2308d280a5d"
    }
  }
}

Answer 1

Hi CAT,

Thank you for reaching out to Microsoft Q&A and providing the detailed error information. Based on my research, this appears to be a server-side issue on the Microsoft Graph backend, potentially related to processing failures during delta queries for SharePoint list items. REF: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/graph/errors

Similar errors have been reported in the past for delta endpoints, often due to transient glitches, large data volumes, or backend timeouts, but we couldn't find any active service advisories matching this exact scenario as of February 24, 2026. The Microsoft 365 service health dashboard shows no ongoing incidents for Microsoft Graph or SharePoint Online. For now, could you try to test in Graph Explorer: Use the Graph Explorer tool to replicate the query. Start with the base /items endpoint to confirm list access, then test delta with a fresh token (no previous @odata.deltaLink).

Next, review permissions and query setup:

• Ensure your application has the required permissions (Sites.Read.All or Sites.ReadWrite.All).
• Check for throttling: Delta queries can fail on large lists; try filtering by modified dates or starting a new delta query.
• Validate that the access token is current and not stale.

You can also implement retries: Add exponential backoff logic in your code (e.g., retry after 1s, 2s, 4s, up to 5 attempts) to handle transient errors.

If these steps don't resolve the issue, please open a support ticket through the Azure portal. Include the request ID from your error response, affected tenant details, timestamps, and reproduction steps for faster assistance.

Hope this help.

---

Note: Please follow the steps in our documentation to enable e-mail notifications if you want to receive the related email notification for this thread.