New Outlook.com account – SMTP OAuth2 fails with “SmtpClientAuthentication is disabled for the Mailbox”
Hello,
I recently created a personal Outlook.com account and configured it in Mozilla Thunderbird on Windows 11.
What works:
- Receiving emails via IMAP in Thunderbird.
- Sending and receiving emails through Outlook.com webmail.
- Microsoft OAuth2 authorization completes successfully.
What fails:
Sending emails from Thunderbird consistently fails with an SMTP authentication error.
SMTP configuration:
Server: smtp-mail.outlook.com Port: 587 Connection security: STARTTLS Authentication: OAuth2 Username: user@outlook.com (anonymized)
Exact error from Thunderbird's Error Console:
535 Authentication unsuccessful, SmtpClientAuthentication is disabled for the Mailbox.
Followed by:
Error during AUTH XOAUTH2, sending empty response
500 Unrecognized command 'Length: 7'
Troubleshooting already performed: Verified all IMAP and SMTP settings. Enabled two-step verification on my Microsoft account. Confirmed that the SMTP username matches my Microsoft account's primary alias. Deleted and renewed the stored OAuth2 credentials. Tested both smtp-mail.outlook.com and smtp.office365.com. Temporarily disabled Bitdefender's Thunderbird extension. Confirmed that Thunderbird accepts Microsoft authentication cookies.
None of these steps resolved the issue.
Microsoft Support declined to investigate SMTP AUTH availability for my mailbox and referred me to Mozilla.
I found similar reports, including Mozilla Bugzilla issue #2071567.
Could you confirm whether this is a known limitation affecting newly created Outlook.com accounts and whether a workaround or fix is available?
Thank you.