this post was submitted on 15 Jan 2024
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I tried to change to Thunderbird but I can't figure out how to make it work with my work e-mail. I'm wondering how much of that has to do with my work e-mail using office365. ๐ค
Everything. O365/outlook do not use normal email protocols. On normal exchange you can enable imap. Do not know about o365 tho. Also unfortunatly you loose a lot of other features if you dare to step outside the walled garden.
IMAP can be turned on for office 365 but it's up to the org admins
I think O365 only allows authentication via OAuth2. Can't just punch in your password and go anymore. Not sure if Thunderbird supports that or not.
It does, and so does FairEmail.
By default they use protocols specific to outlook/exchange/365. Sometimes referred to as activesync or outlook anywhere, which encapsulates their own protocol (I think it's MAPI?) Over an HTTPS tunnel.
These technologies have had a lot of names.
In the past few years 365 also requires TLS 1.2 at least, and oauth. Oauth is when a mini browser window pops up for your 2FA info, like ms authenticator or duo or whatever your organisation is using. The nice thing about oauth is that it's compatible with many identity providers, not just MS. The bad thing is that it's fairly unique that outlook supports it. I don't know of any other email clients that support it....
Even if you can get passed the login, most mail clients don't support MAPI over HTTPS the way that outlook does. There are some android/iPhone apps that support it, but that's not universal either; the naming can fluctuate between the options I've mentioned earlier.
The only good way to get this done (speaking as someone who has had to help someone get it working), the organizational email admin needs to enable either pop or (preferably) IMAP, and assign an application password to it. This password is long and usually a string of random characters. It gets saved to your email client software and it is used nowhere else. It's been a long time since I've done this and I'm not sure it's still supported like this.
I hope that gives you more information as to the challenge ahead of you.
Good luck.
Both Thunderbird and FairEmail work with outlook OAuth for me.
Good to know.