The key facts

  • Microsoft 365 outage since Thursday has affected Outlook, Teams and Copilot; in Portugal, the government, schools and Health Ministry institutions have been hit
  • Ministers are communicating via WhatsApp and Signal; the government says work continues thanks to an internal network and alternative means
  • Microsoft has ruled out a cyberattack and has not named a timeframe for full recovery

What happened

Since Thursday afternoon, Microsoft has been experiencing a large-scale outage of its Microsoft 365 services: Outlook, the Teams video conferencing platform, the Copilot artificial intelligence assistant and other services are unavailable or working intermittently, Euronews reports. According to preliminary data from the company itself, the problem is related to a configuration update which, it is believed, caused an overload and the shutdown of part of its servers. Microsoft stated that it sees no signs that the outage was the result of a cyberattack, but has so far not committed to naming a timeframe for the full restoration of its infrastructure.

Portugal: government and healthcare

The most notable consequences of the outage have been reported in Portugal. The Shared Services of the Ministry of Health (SPMS) confirmed that the global outage is affecting institutions under the Health Ministry and said they are working to restore services; an SPMS source, in a comment to the Lusa news agency, did not specify which areas are affected. According to the TV channel SIC Notícias, several ministers of the Portuguese government have been left without access to email and are using messaging apps such as WhatsApp and Signal to communicate. A government source assured the TV channel that the cabinet's work is not under threat: there is an internal computer network that the disruptions do not affect.

Official assurances and schools

The government's General Secretariat confirmed in a statement that since Thursday it has been registering “problems in various IT tools that support the daily activities of the government and the state administration”, but stressed that “the normal functioning of all these structures is ensured, in particular through the use of alternative secure means.” According to it, the secretariat remains in constant contact with Microsoft, the company's technical teams are restoring services across Europe, and priority will be given to services of the state administration. Schools are also experiencing problems: the chairman of the Association of Group and Public School Directors, Filinto Lima, explained to the radio station Renascença that the outage disrupted communication between parents, teachers and students — institutional email accounts and the Teams platform, where teachers post homework assignments, are unavailable.

Progress of the recovery

Microsoft is publishing regular updates on the situation. In an update released at 12:10, the company reported “encouraging progress in the recovery” and stated on the X platform that email delivery metrics are improving across an increasing portion of the affected infrastructure, while warning that some users may still experience “episodic issues as recovery efforts continue.” Thus, at the time of publication, the situation was one of partial recovery: official statements from Portuguese authorities described the disruptions as ongoing, and Microsoft did not name a timeframe for fully resolving the consequences.