You can't set up a Microsoft 365 account in Outlook

  • Article
  • Applies to:
    Outlook 2019, Outlook 2016, Outlook 2013

Original KB number:   4493666

Symptoms

You can't successfully set up a Microsoft 365 Exchange Online email account in Outlook.

Cause

This issue might occur if your Exchange administrator enables multi-factor authentication (MFA) for your account, but doesn't enable modern authentication for the Exchange tenant organization.

When this issue occurs, the server returns an HTTP 456 authentication error.

Resolution

To fix this issue, disable MFA for the account in the Microsoft 365 admin center. To do this, follow these steps.

Note

You might have to contact your Exchange administrator to disable the MFA .

  1. Browse to the Microsoft 365 portal, and sign in to your Microsoft 365 subscription by using your Global Administrator account.
  2. On the main portal page, select Admin.
  3. In the navigation pane, select Users > Active users.
  4. In the Active users pane, select More > Multi-factor authentication setup.
  5. Select the check box next to the affected user.
  6. Under quick steps, select Disable.

More information

To enable MFA for organizations, Exchange administrators must enable modern authentication in Exchange Online. By default, newer Exchange Online tenants have modern authentication enabled.

You can enable modern authentication for tenants as necessary. Before you enable modern authentication for your Exchange organization, take compatibilities into account. Consider that the user experience will change if MFA is enabled in your organization.

For more information, see the following websites: