Could not add O365 account via new profile in Outlook 2016

Question

Had this issue again which caused major headaches. Stemmed from the fact that the user had previously set up a Microsoft account using their business email address. After setting up Office365 for them they could not authenticate. Got them to change their email address associated with the old MS account. Removed any cached Credentials in Windows 10. Signed out of all Office Apps and OneDrive.

Switched off the Microsoft Security policies in Azure AD as the MFA was a pain. Every time I added their account to Outlook 2016 it would link to the old on premise Exchange server.

I followed the procedure given here

https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/af104059-af64-478f-b444-5498b9e267e4/outlook-2016-we-couldnt-set-up-your-account-automatically?forum=exchangesvrclients

and bizarrely this fixed the issue.

Basically add the Office365 account to Windows Mail where you specifically select Office365. Once connected close Windows Mail and proceed to add the account via Outlook or a new profile via Control Panel to add O365 to Outlook 2016.

Answer 1

Hi @Nick Franklin ,

Welcome!

According to your description, sounds like your issue is more related to your Outlook Autodiscover behavior. Does this issue only happen to specific Outlook client? Can the same email account work fine on other Outlook clients?

In order to conduct further researches on your issue, it is suggested for you to try registry keys like ExcludeLastKnownGoodURL, ExcludeHttpsRootDomain
and ExcludeSrvRecord to avoid Outlook Autodiscover searching from Cached URL and see if this issue could be resolved. (Note: Serious problems can occur if you modify the registry incorrectly. Before making changes, back up the registry to restore it in case something goes wrong.)

For example:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Outlook\AutoDiscover
DWORD = ExcludeLastKnownGoodURL
Value = 1

For more related information:
Unexpected Autodiscover behavior when you have registry settings under the \Autodiscover key
Office 365 migration, server address is showing the old pop server
(Note: Since the web site is not hosted by Microsoft, the link may change without notice. Microsoft does not guarantee the accuracy of this information.)

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Answer 2

Thank you for your response. I tried the ExcludeLastKnownGoodURL key but not the others to be honest because I stumbled on the Microsoft Mail 'fix'. But let us get real here. Registry hacks to fix an issue shouldn't be necessary. Under normal circumstances, a non IT person would struggle with such changes and what we are doing is fixing Microsoft bugs with registry hacks.

I have never had an issue adding multiple accounts on Outlook for Mac where accounts having existed as non O365 accounts previously on the same email address, it just works, so clearly the way Microsoft Windows handles these accounts is bug ridden.

It should absolutely not be necessary to tweak the registry to fix a bug end of. What we are doing is finding ways around an issue that Microsoft needs to fix. Microsoft Mail was quite happy to add the account without issue so why not Microsoft Office Outlook 2016. Adding the account to Microsoft Mail allowed me to easily add the account to Outlook afterwards, a much quicker solution than registry tweak trial and errors. As IT admins we are constantly finding ways to fix Microsoft bugs and this really should not be necessary to make things work. As IT admins we choose this route because we know that Microsoft will not fix the issues we find any time soon. Even support requests to Microsoft directly have failed to fix this issue for some users.

Sorry rant over, but when you have multiple users having the same issue on multiple PC's the whole installation process for Office365 becomes very stressful especially when you quote the customer 4 hours to do a simple switch to O365 and it ends up taking 8 because you then have to research the issue, find the correct solution from a plethora of potential solutions and then apply the fix in the hope it works. If Microsoft were billed for every wasted IT admin hour to find workarounds they would soon be fixing these issues.