Volume 29 Issue 27

Issue Date: September 26, 2024 « Previous Issue | Next Issue »

The following articles were included in our Exchange Messaging Outlook (EMO) newsletter published on September 26, 2024.

EMO is a weekly publication. To receive your own copy of EMO by email, subscribe here.

Support Exchange Messaging Outlook Sponsors

Increase Your Productivity!

ReliefJet Essentials for Outlook is a set of more than 160 tools for performing a wide range of tasks in Outlook: processing email messages, contacts, appointments, meetings, tasks and other Outlook items.

ReliefJet Essentials for Outlook

Today's Highlights »

New Outlook and Microsoft Business Accounts
Syncing Google Workspace Accounts to Outlook
Comparing Outlook and Gmail Message Counts
Outlook.com Authentication Changes

New Outlook and Microsoft Business Accounts

A user was affected by the changes to Outlook.com authentication and installed new Outlook for Mac. They were able to add their outlook.com account to the Outlook and it worked fine, but had problems setting up a Microsoft 365 work account.

The error message: This account cannot be added. The license provided by your work or school does not enable access to Outlook for Mac. Please access your email through Outlook on the web instead.

I said they needed a Microsoft 365 software subscription to add the business account to Outlook. They said they had a Microsoft 365 subscription.

It turns out they were using the free Outlook for Mac from the Mac store and had a Microsoft 365 Basic subscription, which gets 100Gb in OneDrive and Outlook.com mailbox, but it does not include the software. The error message was because business accounts now require a software subscription to add the account to the new Outlook apps.

The license can be for consumer software if the Microsoft account address is an outlook.com (including Hotmail, live, or msn) address and is added to new Outlook and set as the primary account in the Outlook app.

The same applies to the new Outlook for Windows: you must have a software subscription to add a Microsoft 365 work or school mailbox to the app.

Personal outlook.com accounts don’t need a subscription to use new Outlook but will have ads in the Inbox if they don’t have a subscription. Tip: Enabling Focused Inbox removes the ad from the Focused tab and puts two ads on the Other tab.

My earlier article on this error is at "This account is not supported in Outlook" error message and this article on Ads in New Outlook

Syncing Google Workspace Accounts to Outlook

Google is disabling “Allow less secure apps” option on all business accounts at the end of this month. User connecting to classic Outlook 2016 and newer should not have an issue as these versions support oAuth2 authentication.

Users syncing a Google business account in Outlook 2013 and older will need to enable 2-step verification and use an app password to continue syncing with Outlook.

Any mail app that brings up the Google sign in screen when you sign into the account is not affected by this change. This includes new Outlook for Windows and for Mac, both of which sync calendar and contacts along with email.

Classic Outlook users can use Google Workspace Sync for Microsoft Outlook addin to sync their mail, calendar, and contacts to Outlook.

You need to close Outlook before installing it. When I helped clients set it up, after installing it, we needed to open the app from the start menu. I typed “google workspace” on the start menu and opened the option to set it up.

The first time you run the add-in, it will ask you to sign in and create a new profile. You cannot use a Microsoft Exchange mailbox in the same profile as the Google Workspace Sync account, but POP and other IMAP accounts should work ok.

Note: The default email sync in Google Workspace Sync is a paltry 1 GB but you can change it. After installing and setting up the app, right click on the sync all in the notification area and choose the data file size option. Change it to unlimited size to sync all.

If you need to sync Google calendar, contacts and want to use an Exchange account in the same profile, CompanionLink or gSyncit will work, although you will lose the ability to view the global address list.

Google is also disabling Google Sync, which used Exchange Active Sync to sync calendar and contacts. Users will need to use an app that supports CalDav and CardDav for syncing (most mobile mail apps do). If your account errors, remove the account from the app and add it back, using auto account setup. This will set it up using the supported protocols.

Comparing Outlook and Gmail Message Counts

If you are syncing your Gmail account to classic Outlook and the message counts in a folder in Gmail do not match the count in Outlook below are the settings and options you need to check.

In classic Outlook’s File tab > Account Settings > Account Settings > Email tab, double click on the Gmail account. Verify that the sync slider is set to All.

If Outlook shows filtered in the lower left of the status bar, you need to change the view in View tab > Change view. The default view for IMAP accounts is Hide Messages Marked for Deletion. Change it to IMAP Messages to see the Items and Unread counts in the status bar.

Outlook always counts individual messages regardless of the conversation settings. On the other hand, Gmail counts are based on the conversation view settings and are either total conversations or individual messages.

In Gmail, the unread count is shown on the folder and the total messages in that folder are on the top right, above the date column in this format:
[total this page] of [total count]

If the counts in Outlook don’t match the counts in Gmail.com (and Gmail is lower), you are using the conversation view and the counts are for conversations, not total items. The folder count lists the total conversations with unread messages and the total in the page list on the right is total conversations.

Change the setting to “Conversation view off” in Gmail’s Settings > General. The Conversation View options are about halfway down.

The total items and unread counts should match up if everything is synced and Gmail is not set to use conversation view.

Tip: To get the total count of all messages in your Gmail mailbox, check the counts in the All Mail folder.

Outlook.com Authentication Changes

As previously announced, Microsoft began disabling basic authentication on outlook.com accounts on September 16. They did it by region, so not everyone’s account was turned off immediately. They expect to have basic auth disabled on all Microsoft accounts within a couple of weeks.

When it is turned off any mail client using basic auth will have error messages when signing in. They will need to use a mail app that support modern authentication, or if using a supported mail app, remove the account from the app and add it back.

If you had the same Microsoft Account sign in dialog you see when you sign in using a browser, you are using oAuth2 (aka modern authentication) and will not be affected when basic auth is turned off.