Office 365 outlook login problem

[Patch22]

hi,

Could really do with some help on this. I've got a customer setup with o365. Emails in Outlook 2016 with separate profiles for each user. No authentication details are saved on PC, so that users can login to the same user account on a PC, and select and login to their Outlook profile using their o365 sign in. Enables the customers' staff to hot desk more easily.

They hired someone new, went to create a new user profile in Outlook but Outlook won't move passed the 2nd authentication username and password popup, Keeps re-asking. I've checked password and reset. Changed DNS servers to google public DNS in case a lookup was going local somewhere(seen that before).

After searching online found references to removing old auto discover records in the Outlook appdata folder, so did that also.

Also removed all credentials from the Windows Store.

Last ditch attempt I also removed office and reinstalled.

Running Windows. 7. Haven't checked domain DNS or auto discover as other users are fine!

Any suggestions as I am stumped?

Thanks for any help

 

[TurricanII]

Try Microsoft's own troubleshooting tool - look for clues in the output:

https://testconnectivity.microsoft.com/

Have you got more than one on Outlook 2016 or is this the first one?

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

This tool works great for stubborn Outlook resolution issues...
http://diagnostics.office.com/#/?env=Maven

Although I'd wonder about the local MS Office install authentication...if that is muddying up the setup. If you have multiple O365 users sharing the same computer, you should have MS Office installed in "Shared Computer Access Mode"...so that it will authenticate against each users O365 account. Of course the typical use for this is with different network logins too. But I'm wondering if going against this standard practice is tossing a hiccup in your clients setup.

 

[Patch22]

Thanks. love this forum. I've not come across "Shared Computer Access Mode" so will do some reading around it. I have a hunch the oddball config is causing this as well, but the client needs to hotdesk the P.C's and doesn't want a bunch of dissimilar user accounts on each computer..workgroup environment so can't setup roaming profiles and they don't want to forkout for a server and AD. Thanks again

 

[Patch22]

Try Microsoft's own troubleshooting tool - look for clues in the output:

https://testconnectivity.microsoft.com/

Have you got more than one on Outlook 2016 or is this the first one?

I've used this tool before and it never seems to uncover anything new, but thanks for the reminder. I will give it a go.
Also, yes other P.C's have upgraded to Office 2016 through O365 prompts. I've now been told other P.C's sometimes have Outlook prompt for username and passwords during the working day (doesn't remember settings). ...this is becoming a bit of a pain now!!

 

[TimM]

Have you logged on to the email account using the on-line version of Outlook? When you do that you'll be asked to choose the language to use. You won't have any luck getting the account working in the local version of Outlook until you've done that.

 

[Patch22]

Have you logged on to the email account using the on-line version of Outlook? When you do that you'll be asked to choose the language to use. You won't have any luck getting the account working in the local version of Outlook until you've done that.

Yes, the customer has been working from the webportal no problem

 

[Patch22]

you should have MS Office installed in "Shared Computer Access Mode"...so that it will authenticate against each users O365 account. Of course the typical use for this is with different network logins too. But I'm wondering if going against this standard practice is tossing a hiccup in your clients setup.

I've done some reading and this appears to be for Office 365 ProPlus and for multiple access to a computer using RDS. My customer has Office 365 Business and users log on locally. I don't think the business package has this option, but I might be wrong?

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

I've done some reading and this appears to be for Office 365 ProPlus and for multiple access to a computer using RDS. My customer has Office 365 Business and users log on locally. I don't think the business package has this option, but I might be wrong?

It's for the E plans (most of our clients are on that)....it's not just for terminal server. It's for any computer that has more than 1 person with an O365 account log onto that computer. So...for example, the "front desk" computer that might have 2 or 3 or 4 or more users log in. This way you don't have to re-register Office with each users online account.

Office 365 install is registered to the user that logs in.

 

[Patch22]

Thanks for the clarification. Looked into this further and it looks like the customer will have to upgrade to Enterprise E3 at a minimum. I guess it's either that or a server and AD. I've checked their subscription and there is no magic button to upgrade them either so it looks like I will have to manually purchase new services and move the users.

 

[Patch22]

Just looking at what can go wrong with this ahead of time and found this from Microsoft as a potential problem for me setting up all their shared computers:

"Sorry, this Office 365 account has recently been used to activate too many computers.
Microsoft places a limit on the number of shared computers that a user can activate Office 365 ProPlus on in a given time period. This error means that the user exceeded that limit."

Any clue how many computers can be activated by a user and what time period there are referring to? Honestly, Microsoft make me nuts with this type of useless comment!

 

[callthatgirl]

My old Outlook profile on my computer probably had 40 accounts it in at one time as I do alot of work with clients emails on my own computer. I would guess it's Outlook 2016 being stubborn. If you go look in the appdata file, check to see if that profile has a 16,464 KB file it in, delete that and try again. I bet it's snagged up.

And if that fails, my first reaction is to downgrade that pc to Outlook 2013 asap!

 

[Patch22]

My old Outlook profile on my computer probably had 40 accounts it in at one time as I do alot of work with clients emails on my own computer. I would guess it's Outlook 2016 being stubborn. If you go look in the appdata file, check to see if that profile has a 16,464 KB file it in, delete that and try again. I bet it's snagged up.

And if that fails, my first reaction is to downgrade that pc to Outlook 2013 asap!

Thanks for the tip, will remember that for future use! The customer isn't interested at all in downgrading Office. Personally the jury is still out for me on Outlook 2016. It has previously cost me hours of labour (un-billable) and quite a bit of embarrassment just being totally un-reliable with POP accounts and user profiles...and it even looks the same as Office 2013...what actually is any different for the average punter? Just tighter integration with O365 for Microsoft's profit ponies

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Any clue how many computers can be activated by a user and what time period there are referring to? Honestly, Microsoft make me nuts with this type of useless comment!

Remember...Office 365 is basically "USER" licenses, not device licenses.
Each user can install Microsoft Office on up to 5x computers, concurrently.
That is why I think you'll have issues with the current method of sharing the computers.

If you log into the users web portal...you can manage these computers, and remove "old/no longer used" computers to free up that license for another computer.

Last I knew, no true upgrade path from a B plan to an E plan. Might be now...I'd have to look. Else...export each user to a PST.....pull public e-mail alias from that account (but leaving the *.onmicrosoft.com) account for a while..in case you need to go back to get more data).
Create new tenant in E plan...setup users, import PSTs.

 

[callthatgirl]

I would be firm with the client then, tell them that their not wanting to downgrade will be 100% billable time to fix this. I do not fix it anymore, I have clients call Microsoft themselves if they want to try to fix it, or I will downgrade them at my billable rates. Like you...I have given my time on the troubleshooting, many lost hours of work and too many headaches. You don't even want to see the screenshots my clients this am sent me, I about had a stroke looking at them. The graphics were all blank, black screens, what a freaking mess. And they had MS fix it once already LOL!