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Adding hotmail (live, outlook) accounts to Thunderbird

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PMC
PMC

I have been trying to add my accounts to Thunderbird and had good success with gmail but wasn't able for Microsoft accounts. As I said in another thread (can't find the message anymore), I have 2 microsoft email account (one live.ca and one hotmail.com) and they both don't work. I was able to add them in Outlook desktop app and EM Client (a non open source software i'd rather not use) through IMAP with success. IMAP is activated in both accounts and as per Microsoft documentation the server is supposed to be outlook.office365.com on port 993. eM Client magically discover IMAP settings to imap-mail.outlook.com instead. Thunderbird opens an OAuth page and then it redirects from microsoftonline.com to localhost and fail with "Unable to connect".

2FA not activated in one account, if that matters. I have nothing running on port 80 if that matters.

I have been trying to add my accounts to Thunderbird and had good success with gmail but wasn't able for Microsoft accounts. As I said in another thread (can't find the message anymore), I have 2 microsoft email account (one live.ca and one hotmail.com) and they both don't work. I was able to add them in Outlook desktop app and EM Client (a non open source software i'd rather not use) through IMAP with success. IMAP is activated in both accounts and as per Microsoft documentation the server is supposed to be outlook.office365.com on port 993. eM Client magically discover IMAP settings to imap-mail.outlook.com instead. Thunderbird opens an OAuth page and then it redirects from microsoftonline.com to localhost and fail with "Unable to connect". 2FA not activated in one account, if that matters. I have nothing running on port 80 if that matters.

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christ1
christ1
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You'll also have to allow cookies in Thunderbird. See https://support.mozilla.org/kb/microsoft-oauth-authentication-and-thunderbird-202

PMC
PMC Ìbéèrè olóhun

Thanks, I had no exclusion and it was already checked to "Accept cookies". I was able to make it work by using outlook.office365.com:143 with starttls/OAuth2. That account has 2FA enabled. Sending through outlook.office365.com:587

christ1
christ1
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  • Moderator

As per the support article linked above, the correct settings for the incoming server would be:

outlook.office365.com, port 993 for IMAP Connection security: SSL/TLS Authentication method: OAuth2

PMC
PMC Ìbéèrè olóhun

Final working settings (for me) :

hotmail outlook.office365.com:143 StartTLS

live account outlook.office365.com:993 and using SSL only (not StartTLS)

both account uses OAuth2, have 2fa on, passwordless account off and no app password configured

Béèrè ìbéèrè

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