Microsoft outage hits UW-Milwaukee as Outlook and Teams go down for hours

Microsoft outage hits UW-Milwaukee as Outlook and Teams go down for hours Advertisement Updated: 10:32 PM CST Nov 12, 2026 Editorial Standards ⓘ Denise Craig Maddie Augustine Reporter Microsoft outage hits UW-Milwaukee as Outlook and Teams go down for hours Updated: 10:32 PM CST Nov 12, 2026 Editorial Standards ⓘ Denise Craig Maddie Augustine Reporter MILWAUKEE — A major Microsoft outage disrupted services for hundreds of thousands of people across the country Thursday. Microsoft Outlook still down for users; company continues to look for fix For nearly the entire day, users were unable to use functions like email, AI, and online meetings. Some services were restored somewhat quickly, but Microsoft Outlook remained down for hours. Advertisement On UW-Milwaukee's campus, communicating got a lot harder throughout the day. "Not able to do my regular things," John Carlo Mariano, a grad student at UW-Milwaukee said. "Haven't been able to send emails or even just be able to look at a lot of things. A lot of things are connected to Microsoft, so it's just been pretty hard." Cyber expert, Alex Holden, from Mequon, told 12 News the cause of the outage was not immediately clear. "We are experiencing a huge outage in within Microsoft infrastructure and more specifically within their Microsoft 365 products," Holden said. "Microsoft is making number of statements saying that it's a technology problem. It's affecting specific regions and they're trying to restore services." In some online statements, shared on X, Microsoft said they were "aggressively pursuing all pathways to reduce impact" and "our investigation indicates the failed health checks may originate from a specific component that's responsible for processing server health." Whatever the cause, it impacted more than just communication for many. "I work at the UW Student Success Center, and our meetings with students, a lot of the time take place on teams, and we had to cancel a number of meetings because they couldn't obviously take place," Grayson Zahner, a student at UW-Milwaukee, said. "We also offer tutoring services which are recorded in Excel. And when when we were recording those today, we had to make sure not to reload the tab, otherwise we wouldn't be able to record people's information to check them in for the appointments." Microsoft did not share an estimated repair time, which left users in the dark for hours. "It makes a lot of things really uncertain," Zahner said. Holden said this is not the first time the country has experienced a large scale outage like this, and he encourages everyone to practice "good hygiene in cyber security." He said that includes things like ensuring you use strong passwords, don't click on suspicious links or messages and report anything that appears off. Make WISN a preferred source on Google Add Preferred Source Share Infinite Scroll Enabled Top Picks Newly released Ring camera shows Brooklyn building collapsing Anthony Clark, a comedian and actor who starred on 'Yes, Dear,' dies Teen who has autism found alive after missing for nearly a week in the Australian woodlands Microsoft confirms Outlook outage affecting users worldwide