Can't connect Thunderbird to MS Outlook email server
I am unable to connect Thunderbird to my “Personal” Outlook.com mail account. I installed Thunderbird on a new laptop with Win11-home. I connected to yahoo and icloud without issue. In the past I used an app-specific password to connect Thunderbird to Outlook. But Microsoft no longer allows me to make app-specific passwords on a personal account. I have two factor authentication on the MS account. I have tried turning off virus and firewall protection, without success.
When I create a new email account in Thunderbird I get the following error. “Authentication failed. Please check the username and password - Exchange auth error”
If I put my personal name in the Your Logon field, rather than my email address, I get a Microsoft screen pop that shows “oauth2” in the URL. But if I click the personal account they present it quickly fails.
Is there a workaround, to fix this, since I can’t get a app-specific password and have two-factor authentication on my Microsoft account?
Thank You for any help you can provide. I have spent a day researching this without success.
Kurt
All Replies (3)
is this an office 365 or free account (they are different sometimes) What version of Thunderbird are you using (check help menu > about or the troubleshootong information)
There is work being done in the release versions to enable native exchange using EWS, so make sure you select IMAP as the connection type in the setup so you do not get involved with the experimental stuff. Thunderbird will most likely detect EWS and it is not really appropriate for most home users as Exchange is a more business focused approach. Valid but the features are a little different.
Thankyou for you fast reply! I just installed Thunderbird today with Version 145.0 (64-bit). I am using a free personal version of outlook that is decades old. When creating the email connection account I have only been entering in my email address and password. No other fields are exposed. If however I go to “Manual Configure” I will then be able to set IMAP which it defaults to. However there is an Error in the Host Name field. It shows. “ .outlook.com” I have no idea what the server address should be or what other fields should be set to. I have tried server addresses I have seen when googling around. But they have not worked.
I was able to finally connect Thunderbird to my personal free outlook email account by using the server settings from MS using the following link. https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/pop-imap-and-smtp-settings-for-outlook-com-d088b986-291d-42b8-9564-9c414e2aa040 The Thunderbird New Account setup wizard did not work. I had to manually configure all settings and close/restart the Thunderbird app. It would not connect until I finally went back to the email list view, and suddenly it started to connect, after multiple close/restart of the app. The setup wizard worked easily and beautifully setting up both iCloud (using app-specific password) and Yahoo email. Thank you for your help.