This account is not supported in Outlook for Windows due to the license provided by your work or school

To help keep us on track, let me summarize what we know so far:

This is not something that is "broken," and the indications are that this is not something Microsoft is going to "fix". It appears that all of us who are waiting for a fix might be waiting for a long time.

This is because Microsoft has made the conscious decision to prevent less-expensive Microsoft 365 licenses from using New Outlook for Windows. If you have an A1/E1/F1/Business Basic/EXO P1/EXO P2 or similar "low-cost' Microsoft 365 license, you will not be able to use it with New Outlook for Windows. Microsoft has officially confirmed that they've made this choice, and they have not provided any explanation as to why.

There are some anecdotal suggestions that this has been fixed already. As of January 5th, it is not fixed. The problem still exists. There are some anecdotal suggestions that some people have made it work. These can be grouped into three categories:

1. People who switched to New Outlook before Microsoft issued the restrictive update seem to be okay for now.
2. People who have copied one or more settings database files or registry entries from a working computer to a new computer can sometimes make it work for a previously-working specific account.
3. People who purchase a more expensive license, then add their account to New Outlook, then downgrade that license, have in some cases reported success.

The reasons for these exceptions seem to be that - at the moment - New Outlook only checks the license when the account is first added to New Outlook. However, all of these workarounds seem unreliable (not everyone can make them work) and none of them are supported. Moreover, if Microsoft continues to pursue this destructive course, it's only a matter of time before they modify New Outlook to do a periodic license check, which will invalidate all of these workarounds and disconnect all of these users. But in ALL of these cases, if you remove the account from New Outlook, you will not be able to re-add it, and if you try to migrate to New Outlook from any other program with any of these licenses, they will not work, and if you buy new licenses for the inexpensive accounts, they will also not work. So these workarounds are not solutions in any real way, they're just some people finding a loophole for a specific case.

There are those who suggest that this is in line with Microsoft licensing. We respectfully disagree. We've reviewed their own licenses and terms, and believe that Microsoft is currently violating their own terms of use. But regardless of that, the reality here is that this course is destructive for Microsoft: They support FREE accounts from all the major providers including themselves, which makes the whole thing ridiculous on its face.

It is unfathomable to us why Microsoft is doing this, but we hope to get this reversed. But the only way we can get it reversed is if enough people complain. But it's critical to realize that Microsoft does not participate in this forum, and they are not seeing this thread. The only way to complain about this is to do it in the place where Microsoft actually pays attention, which is in their feedback portal.

To that end, we have created a master feedback item here: https://feedbackportal.microsoft.com/feedback/idea/2f7925cb-3a80-ee11-a81c-000d3ae46fcb . If you are upset about this issue - and you should be! - the best thing to do is to go to that link, and comment and upvote it. They read that feedback, and act on the highest upvote count and highest comment count items. That is the only way to get Microsoft's attention.

And don't stop there. Get your co-workers, get your company administrators, get everyone you know who is a Microsoft 365 customer to go to that same item and upvote it. If we could get many employees from just a few impacted companies to upvote and comment, we could get this on Microsoft's radar much more quickly. The issue is gaining more traction and attention as more people trip over this, but the more votes we can get, the faster the outcome will be.

All of the details of the issue are documented there so, please, if you're reading this, take a moment now to go upvote and comment so that we can get this insanity reversed as quickly as possible.

Thanks,

Glen

Just to confirm the same exact experience here - I have been an Exchange Online P1 user for about 10 years at this point and have always been able to connect the mailbox to licensed copies of Outlook, as well as the included Windows mail client for years along with every other mail client going on mobile including Gmail and Apple mail.

For what it's worth, ALL of these mail clients can still connect to my mailbox without issue. So to be clear there is zero technical reason for this now happening.

So - Microsoft are arbitrarily reducing the functionality of their lower paying customers to try and walk you up the subscription tier by almost forcing you to pay for Business Standard or higher because the experience is going to be pretty much useless for 90% of those users.

Exchange Online P1 has for years been a great service at a reasonable cost and many customers of mine use them to provide contractors and other shorter term collaborators access to a valid business email account while they work together. Usually these people have paid Office licenses of their own and they 100% SHOULD NOT need to pay for the license again.

I sincerely hope that Microsoft get a public flogging for this because it is a pure greed move. No technical reason, just making people's experience worse to try and screw more $$$ out of them.

I will be addressing this with my partner managers as well as the MSP I work with because only if enough people push back against these kinds of practises will Microsoft stop abusing their paying clients.

Guys, I'm marking this thread as "unsolved" again, because seems like Microsoft again did something and removed ability to add our 365 office emails. I wanted to add email for the coworker and got the same error. To test if it got broken again, I logged out from my Outlook app and when tried to login got that horrible error too. So yeah, I confirm it's broken again!

SERIOUSLY, MICROSOFT?! FIRST YOU BREAK IT, THEN FIX IT QUIETLY AND THEN BREAK IT AGAIN?! **** YOU'RE DOING?!!!!

On the top of that, now I also see ads in Outlook. Wow, just wow. I can clearly see on what path Microsoft is going now with this Satya Nadela... It's all about money, asking for more money while delivering worse quality products and services than before.

Lots of people with the same issue and no comment from Microsoft!

This makes no sense

This makes no sense at all.

If you use any other email service with this version of Outlook you can use it for free. (Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook.com FFS)

If I'm a PAYING M365 CUSTOMER, I cant use outlook with my M365 account, unless I pay more?!?!?

Got it. Now Outlook is free. Buy M365 EOP 1, and you aren't allowed to use Outlook anymore.

Cancelling M365 and using a different mail provider sounds like the way to go if you want to use Outlook for free. Use any of the competitors cheap mail plans and switch them. Then you can use Outlook.

@Microsoft : Is this what you want us to recommend to our customers?