Microsoft outage disrupts Portuguese public services and schools
Microsoft said email access was recovering, but some users could still face connection problems and delivery delays.
A worldwide Microsoft 365 outage has disrupted Portuguese government communications, schools and organisations under the Ministry of Health. Microsoft said services were recovering, although access had not been fully restored across all countries.
The disruption affected Outlook, Teams, Copilot and other services. Microsoft indicated that a configuration update appeared to have overloaded servers and caused some to shut down. The company said it had found no evidence of a cyberattack.
Portugal’s Shared Services of the Ministry of Health (SPMS) confirmed that organisations within the ministry were affected. It said it was coordinating recovery work with Microsoft but did not identify which areas had been disrupted.
Several Portuguese ministers lost email access, with ministers and their offices turning to WhatsApp and Signal for communication. A government source said an unaffected internal IT network had allowed work to continue and that government operations had not been compromised.
The government’s secretary-general’s office said secure alternatives were keeping public bodies operating. It also said Microsoft’s technical teams were restoring services across Europe, with public administration services to receive priority.
Filinto Lima, president of the Association of Principals of School Clusters and Public Schools, said the outage had disrupted contact between parents, teachers and pupils. Institutional email and Teams, where teachers share homework and assignments, were inaccessible.
Microsoft said its recovery measures were gradually restoring email access and improving delivery. It cautioned that some users could continue to encounter intermittent connectivity problems or delayed messages while that work continued.
