Outlook 2016 doesn't accept password or app password

All these pages, all these common, all these work-arounds, all this techno-speak... you get the gist, and no solution to something that was working perfectly fine until January 2024. Boggles the mind that Microsoft won't or can't offer a solution. Shame.

A bit more luck for me. I could not connect to eas.outlook.com or m.outlook.com on my main phone in the last few days. I have tried many many times on my phone + 2 other Android devices, but no luck. These have stock Android 12, 13 and 14 environments. Every time I add it as Exchange account type at the OS's account screen, I would get "...cannot connect to server...contact your IT..." error. I repeatedly submit add and it would keep getting the error message.

About an hour ago, I was suddenly able to add the account back with no other changes, on all 3 devices after 2.5 days of attempts. Sync of emails/contacts/calendar all worked. Now, here comes the interesting part. In Android account entry for the added Exchange account, there is a "Server settings" section near the bottom. Under "Incoming settings" selection, your account related settings are all listed. At the very bottom, there is OS option called "Switch to modern auth". This appears to be conversion option without user retype the credentials. Once I click this, a browser session is launched, similar to normal OAuth login screen. I would error out at this point after multiple attempts. If I abandon this, the account remains working.

I then retry the same process with my work account. Initially manually adding it, so it would be Basic Auth, then I use the same "Switch to modern auth" and is able to successfully convert to Modern Auth. This show this conversion function works. This goes further to strengthen the argument that EAS with OAuth may not be supported or is not currently working correctly for consumer email accounts such as Hotmail.

Hi, I am one of the many regular readers of this post, which has remained silent until now. I am a 365 subscriber with family plan and all members so far have used the Microsoft account as a reference for email, contacts and calendar synching. We all have Android smartphones and for all of them I had set up an EAS account on the system side (Gmail) with the instructions provided directly by Microsoft. Only this action allows you to use native/Google (or third-party) apps dedicated to calls/contacts/calendar without problems. I use the outlook mobile app exclusively to manage emails, because that's the only way I think it's useful and I prefer it to Gmail. I've been struggling with these problems for a month and I'm afraid that in a few months, when it is decided to completely end support for basic authentication, I will be forced to migrate completely to the Google ecosystem, despite having a 365 family account and lots of emails hotmail/outlook.

Microsoft, please, analyzes the problem again: many people don't just want an IMAP account. We want, even for the consumer, an EAS (or replacement, the important thing is that it has the same utility) account to synchronize everything, including contacts and calendar. The problem is described perfectly in this AnotherBug post to which I'm responding.

Are you really sure that OAuth works well with the EAS protocol even for consumer users? Really the problem, in my case, would be Google not updating its app to fully support OAuth, despite it also being a company that is naturally pushing towards modern authentication? Even in the solution examples regarding Thunderbird and Apple mail, it seems to me that it's always and only the IMAP protocol.

As a further starting point for analysis, I would like to point out that in this discussion there was also a very technical comment by a developer (Marco Ancona), dated 02/24, in which he explained his difficulties in implementing OAuth combined with EAS on its own calendar app for Android.

Oh I didn't know that, I got now my favorites accounts inboxes in the order I wanted, thanks

One last thing, I don't get any notification sound when I receive a new email. In my Settings -> Notification & Actions I have "Outlook New" Banners and Sounds turned On, Focus Assist is off, I get only the new email notification banner, the banner also stays correctly in the Action Center pane until dismissed, but there is no sound when I get a new email, what can be the cause that?

UPDATE: Nevermind, I found the option in the General Settings -> Notify me About. I didn't notice that the Email tab can be expanded using the down arrow. The Play Sound option is off by default, after turning that on, is now playing the sound once a new email is received.

Thanks

Thanks for the feedback and your first impressions. I am not sure if you are utilizing the favorite folders in the New Outlook just yet. But the way I have it setup is it is syncing all of my accounts, and I add the inbox of each folder to my favorites (right click on the folder you want to add and select add to favorite).

We have introduced drag and drop reordering of the favorite list. This is the way I order them and then just quickly go through them in order that I prefer.

I will indeed pass on the full-on account re-ording to that part of the team as well.

What version is your Office 2016? If it's not close to mine go to Windows Update > Advanced Options, and enable "Microsoft Update", Win11 setting below. This will ensure you have the latest Office updates.

Check if you have this registry key set that tells Outlook to connect with Modern Auth. Its not normally needed but worth trying, How modern authentication works for Office 2013 and Office 2016 client apps - Microsoft 365 Enterprise | Microsoft Learn.

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Common\Identity\

Dword:EnableADAL

Value:1