Outlook.com "Sync Email" settings - "Unable to load these settings. Please try again later."

It's "very funny" that Microsoft keeps sending me e-mails about broken synchronization with advices how to fix the problem in the Outlook settings, where you can only see the sentence "Unable to load these settings...". This level of amateurism could be expected from a no-name garage company, but definitely from Microsoft. Well, this is a big fail and shame. (I'm seriously considering to discontinue my 365 subscription.)

You are correct in pointing out that existing sync accounts still work - and apparently will continue to do so.

No new sync accounts will be supported; that feature is no longer available and that is official.

However the sync pane is not accessible at all so:

• you cannot remove accounts you no longer want to sync
• if account credentials (eg passwords) change, you cannot update them (and will get annoying messages that they do not work)
• continuous unsuccessful login attempts from outlook.com may lock these accounts you cannot update
• other features on the sync pane (eg default FROM: address) cannot be updated.

Microsoft told me in a support reply that this will be fixed, but that was a few weeks back.

However the sync feature, for new accounts, is gone.

I wrote a post on Reddit with a workaround for this problem (i.e. the 'Sync email' settings panel failing to load). You can find my post here: https://old.reddit.com/r/gsuitelegacymigration/comments/t5843t/default_from_in_microsoft_365/hz68yfx/?context=3.

I realize this might be a bit too complicated for most, apologies for that, but it's the best I could do for now. It basically boils down to Outlook.com returning a server error (HTTP status code 500) for one of the settings that used to be on the 'Sync email' settings panel, causing all of the other (mostly unrelated) settings on that panel to fail loading as well. By following the steps outlined above, we can essentially 'trick' the browser into believing that the server-side error never occurred, after which it will load all of the settings except for the one setting that was seemingly removed by Microsoft (which causes the server error). So this is basically a client-side error caused by a server-side error.

Hope this helps! :)

Microsoft still reports:

on https://portal.office.com/servicestatus

but the sync email facility still does not display.

How does Microsoft justify this falsehood?

NB correction: Sync is working in the background - I am receiving emails from the sync accounts.

So while I cannot access the sync settings page, it IS working.

Obviously I cannot update these settings but as of now, I do not need to.

Yes, Microsoft is aware of the problem.