Office 365 cloud features do not work when using a privacy VPN

Office365 does not play well with VPNs and whilst this may be from a security perspective, it's also an issue using the service - I've only encountered issues with the Microsoft 365 product stack here - OneDrive, Outlook, and OneNote in particular with an inability to authenticate.

It's not a solution to disable a number of the features provide by a VPN simply to use a single product suite, although it IS a solution to switch to an alternative product suite... or even approach.

As this has been an issue for over a year, Microsoft should really sort it out and provide a functional mechanism whereby the end user's satisfied with some additional options one security that allow Microsoft to provide the service against these caveats.

It is all very confusing. I was not using CyberSec anyway, and also tried using TCP, but to no avail. NordVPN on my phone was fine, including working with documents from OneDrive!

Between posting my "me too..." response, and the suggestions that followed, I unsubscribed from NordVPN and started using TunnelBear, which at first seemed to work. But it didn't last.

Here is what is confusing me: some of my OneDrive documents open in desktop Word/Excel ok, but others do not and say I am disconnected! I created one document with nothing other than the word 'test' in it, and even that has the problem. I simply do not know what the trigger is.

My get-around is to either edit OneDrive documents in the online apps (i.e. within the browser) and not in the desktop apps. Either that or I simply save docs into Google Drive rather than OneDrive. Oh well.

I am sticking with TunnelBear only because they do not do refunds, but will look again at NordVPN next year at renewal time because it was more feature-rich. 

In both cases, btw, using the VPN on my phone cause no problems.

Bottom-line: not resolved, but I can work-around the problems on my desktop.

Hi Eddie,

It seems some ports are blocked when you use the VPN connection.

Regarding the situation, we suggest you confirm the scenario with your VPN provider, and let know if you need further assistance.

Regards,

Jiaxing Bian

Hi EddieMN,

Are there any updates? Do the Office 365 cloud services work well now?

Regards,

Tim

Hi EddieMN,

To better understand the situation, I’d like to confirm the following things:

1. Is there proxy or firewall in your environment? If the issue is related to the computers in your office, do other users’ computers with the same connection encounter the same issue? Please check if the related IP addresses are included in your outbound allow lists. To learn more, see Office 365 URLs and IP address ranges.

Note: In your office, you may contact IT to check the list.

2. Can you sign into Office 365 portal to use other Office 365 services? Please share with us more details for “Office 365 cloud features do not work” (e.g. some screenshots for the issues or error messages)?
3. Disable the VPN connection in your office, check if Office 365 cloud features work well with normal connection.
4. Open Excel>File>Account>capture a screenshot of Product Information.
5. By "Saving to OneDrive", do you mean consumer OneDrive or OneDrive for Business?  

Moreover, I have sent you a private message to confirm some information. You may find the message via the URLhttps://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/privatemessages/list.

Best regards,

Tim