Using classic Outlook for Windows in business environments
Hi guys, I think I found a solution (at least for mobile users).
We assume that the EAS protocol for consumer users (via eas.outlook.com server) no longer works (or very often gives synchronization errors, until it is disabled completely) because it does not support modern OAuth authentication.
It is very unfortunate that Microsoft has not made this official so far; the information reported in this article, in fact, is NO longer applicable for consumer accounts: Set up email in Android email app - Microsoft Support
As regards any 365 company accounts, however, everything still works correctly through the addition from "Exchange and Office 365" and they are automatically configured without problems with OAuth via the dedicated server outlook.office365.com
Below is a summary of the steps that led me to solve my problems:
- delete the existing EAS account and re-add it as a normal IMAP account (on Android you just need to select "outlook, hotmail and live") to at least allow email synchronization with third-party apps (gmail or other);
- download app outlook mobile (even if you have no intention of using it actively), add the accounts of interest and give it all background permissions, excluding it from any battery optimizations. Go to the app settings and for each account in which you are interested in also synchronizing contacts and/or calendar, select the relevant options "synchronize contacts" and/or "synchronize calendars". In this way, the "Outlook" category will be added within the Android system accounts, which will allow system-wide synchronization and should be viewable/usable by any third-party app (in theory).
I have verified that the two-way synchronization of contacts (with the native Android "contacts" app) is immediate and efficient. However, I noticed some small problems with the synchronization of calendar events on Google Calendar, especially for changes to a pre-existing event, however, it is quite reliable. Personally, while I was doing these tests, I also discovered that the outlook mobile app allows you to insert a very useful "shortcut" icon directly for the calendar section (it is found inside the dedicated widgets) and therefore I am trying to use the calendar directly from here (instead of Google Calendar or other), to have maximum synchronization reliability.
I am confident that this procedure can solve contact and calendar synchronization problems for anyone, at least on Android mobile devices.
I leave the judgments on all this to you (obligation, even for 365 subscriber users, to download the outlook mobile app to enjoy complete synchronization).
P.S. From what I understand (but I could be wrong), OAuth also now makes the "app password" useless and outdated, since I believe it only makes sense in combination with basic authentication.