Outlook can't set up a Microsoft 365 account

  • Article
  • Applies to:
    Exchange Online, Outlook for Microsoft 365

Symptoms

Consider the following scenario:

  • You migrate a user's mailbox from on-premises Microsoft Exchange Server to Exchange Online.

  • You disable all local Autodiscover options in the Disable AutoDiscover Group Policy policy settings.

  • You disable the Allow the use of connected experiences in Office policy setting.

In this scenario, when users try to set up a Microsoft 365 email account on a Microsoft Outlook client, or create a new Outlook profile, they receive one of the following error messages:

Something went wrong and Outlook couldn't set up your account. Please try again. If the problem continues, contact your email administrator.

We're sorry, we couldn't set up your account automatically.

If the users view their Outlook account information in File > Office Account > Connected Services, they might receive the following error message:

Office is currently offline.

Cause

Autodiscover must use either local or cloud options to set up the user accounts on an Outlook client or create user profiles.

The following table lists the local and cloud Autodiscover options.

Local Autodiscover options Cloud Autodiscover options
Last known good URL Office 365 Autodiscover URL
SCP object lookup Autodiscover V2 service
Root domain query
Autodiscover domain query
HTTP redirect method
SRV record query in DNS

In your scenario, after you disable the local Autodiscover options in the Disable AutoDiscover Group Policy policy settings, you expect that the cloud Autodiscover options will be available. However, because you also disable the Allow the use of connected experiences in Office policy setting, access is blocked to the web-based cloud Autodiscover options. This combination of settings effectively disables all Autodiscover options and prevents Outlook from retrieving the email account settings. It also generates the error messages that are described in the Symptoms section.

Resolution

To resolve this issue, use either of the following methods. If you want to keep connected experiences in Office set as disabled, use the second method.

Method 1

In the Group Policy Management Editor, enable the following policy to enable the cloud Autodiscover option:

Administrative Templates > Microsoft Office 2016 > Privacy > Trust Center > Allow the use of connected experiences in Office

Method 2

In the Group Policy Management Editor, make sure that the following policy doesn't disable local Autodiscover:

Administrative Templates > Microsoft Outlook 2016 > Account Settings > Exchange > Disable AutoDiscover