Running Selenium Headless Tests on Outlook shows older version of outlook on Edge chromium browser

Question

Running Selenium Headless Tests on Outlook shows older version of outlook on Edge chromium browser

Manikandan Suresh 21

When I run selenium headless tests on outlook , the outlook UI chosen is an different version than running test in an non-headless mode in outlook using selenium c#. I also ran the test using chrome headless mode but it didn't attach the screen shot for the failed tests , but edge chromium has attached the screen shot for this failed test.

Packages & versions:

Selenium.Webdriver - v-4.1.0
Selenium.Support - v-4.1.0
Ms Edge browser version - 96.0.4664.

Steps to Reproduce :
Pre-requisites: Edge chromium browser , and the above mentioned packages.

Try to login in to your outlook account using selenium in non headless mode , and click new message button, you'll able to see the current version of outlook is chosen.
Add --headless option in your edge browser option and try to run the same test to click the new message button , it will fail the test , since the UI is changed and the locators is also been changed.

Headless version

Expected default version thats currently used

Emily Hua-MSFT 27,796 Reputation points

2021-12-09T02:45:31.707+00:00

Hi @Manikandan Suresh
As your issue is not related to Office desktop client, I would remove the tag "off-itpro".
Thanks for your understanding.
Anonymous

2021-12-09T09:56:42.17+00:00

Hi @Manikandan Suresh

I didn't reproduce the issue. It works well in headless Edge and Chrome. My Edge version is 96.0.1054.43.
Could you please provide the minimal C# code snippet you're using to automate the browser, and which can reproduce the issue? So that we can have a test and see how to help.
Manikandan Suresh 21 Reputation points

2021-12-11T09:01:02.047+00:00

Hi @Anonymous

Could you try using onmicrosoft type account with MFA disabled , I did use a account with *.onmicrosoft.com and ran the test in headless mode showed a different version outlook, I have attached a a unit test txt file and csproj text file156760-test.txt 156831-testcsproj.txt
Anonymous

2021-12-13T09:53:19.753+00:00

Hi @Manikandan Suresh

Now I know why I can't reproduce the issue at first. I use https://www.outlook.com and login with a personal account, but you use link https://outlook.office.com. I don't have a *.onmicrosoft.com account, so I test with a personal account with link https://outlook.office.com and I can reproduce the issue in Edge and Chrome. I think the issue is with the link https://outlook.office.com.

Can you login with https://www.outlook.com? If you can, I suggest that you can try to login with it and test again to see if it works.
Manikandan Suresh 21 Reputation points

2021-12-16T15:47:01.823+00:00

Hi @Anonymous ,

When I used this https://www.outlook.com Url it took me to this url https://outlook.office365.com/mail/inbox which showed different version of outlook after I logged using an onmicrosoft account.
Anonymous

2021-12-17T09:23:25.567+00:00

Hi @Manikandan Suresh

I found a similar thread. Could you please refer to the answer in the thread and add the new Edge user-agent argument to see if it can fix the issue?
Manikandan Suresh 21 Reputation points

2021-12-19T07:10:25.987+00:00

Hi @Anonymous
Thank you , after I added the user agent arguments "user-agent=User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/69.0.3497.100 Safari/537.36" to edge options it works as expected without showing a older version of outlook in headless mode after login.
Anonymous

2021-12-20T01:46:52.183+00:00

Hi @Manikandan Suresh

I'm glad that you have solved the issue. I'll put that into an answer.

Accepted answer

0 additional answers

Your answer

Emily Hua-MSFT 27,796 Reputation points

2021-12-09T02:45:31.707+00:00

Hi @Manikandan Suresh
As your issue is not related to Office desktop client, I would remove the tag "off-itpro".
Thanks for your understanding.
Anonymous

2021-12-09T09:56:42.17+00:00

Hi @Manikandan Suresh

I didn't reproduce the issue. It works well in headless Edge and Chrome. My Edge version is 96.0.1054.43.
Could you please provide the minimal C# code snippet you're using to automate the browser, and which can reproduce the issue? So that we can have a test and see how to help.
Manikandan Suresh 21 Reputation points

2021-12-11T09:01:02.047+00:00

Hi @Anonymous

Could you try using onmicrosoft type account with MFA disabled , I did use a account with *.onmicrosoft.com and ran the test in headless mode showed a different version outlook, I have attached a a unit test txt file and csproj text file156760-test.txt 156831-testcsproj.txt
Anonymous

2021-12-13T09:53:19.753+00:00

Hi @Manikandan Suresh

Now I know why I can't reproduce the issue at first. I use https://www.outlook.com and login with a personal account, but you use link https://outlook.office.com. I don't have a *.onmicrosoft.com account, so I test with a personal account with link https://outlook.office.com and I can reproduce the issue in Edge and Chrome. I think the issue is with the link https://outlook.office.com.

Can you login with https://www.outlook.com? If you can, I suggest that you can try to login with it and test again to see if it works.
Manikandan Suresh 21 Reputation points

2021-12-16T15:47:01.823+00:00

Hi @Anonymous ,

When I used this https://www.outlook.com Url it took me to this url https://outlook.office365.com/mail/inbox which showed different version of outlook after I logged using an onmicrosoft account.
Anonymous

2021-12-17T09:23:25.567+00:00

Hi @Manikandan Suresh

I found a similar thread. Could you please refer to the answer in the thread and add the new Edge user-agent argument to see if it can fix the issue?
Manikandan Suresh 21 Reputation points

2021-12-19T07:10:25.987+00:00

Hi @Anonymous
Thank you , after I added the user agent arguments "user-agent=User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/69.0.3497.100 Safari/537.36" to edge options it works as expected without showing a older version of outlook in headless mode after login.
Anonymous

2021-12-20T01:46:52.183+00:00

Hi @Manikandan Suresh

I'm glad that you have solved the issue. I'll put that into an answer.

Answer 1

Anonymous

Hi @Manikandan Suresh

The issue is due to Edge using an older version of browser in headless mode. You can override the user-agent by adding the user-agent argument user-agent=User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/96.0.4664.110 Safari/537.36 Edg/96.0.1054.57 to fix the issue.

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Regards,
Yu Zhou

Manikandan Suresh 21 Reputation points

2021-12-28T09:18:07.503+00:00

Hi @Anonymous ,
I have a doubt, after overriding the default user agent value in headless mode it worked as expected,but I also analyzed the execution time was same when ran in normal mode[without headless], but does this means actually executes in normal mode except the visual browser instance creation? and does there's any performance difference when overridden the default user agent?, could you please clarify on this.

Regards,
Manikandan S
Anonymous

2021-12-29T09:35:34.987+00:00

Hi @Manikandan Suresh

Your guess looks like makes sense, but I don't find related docs about this. The only thing we can make sure of is that the user-agents of headless mode and headed mode are different.

User-agent is a HTTP request header string identifying browser, application, operating system which connects to the server. As the server identifies browsers according to the user-agent, overriding it with headed Edge's user-agent makes server treat it the same as headed Edge. So I think it might be just a normal Edge without UI.

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Running Selenium Headless Tests on Outlook shows older version of outlook on Edge chromium browser

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