[SOLVED] Outlook 2013 and 2FA

[Mick]

I have a customer using Outlook 2013. He just got the email Google are sending out to say that: "On 30 May, you may lose access to apps that are using less secure sign-in technology". Basically, use 2FA or forget it. Now, upgrading to a newer version of Office is the obvious answer here, but that costs money he doesn't have right now. So, to get round the issue pro tem, I decided to coax Outlook 2013 into 2FA mode. Been a long, long time since I did this, so I asked Google the way. Following which, I did the following:

Reg hack to get Outlook 2FA tolerant.

Switch 2FA on in the customer's Gmail account.

Apply verification code

Apply App password generated by Google to Outlook. These steps all seemed vaguely familiar to me from way back when, so I saw no reason not to follow them.

Outlook took all of this without a burp or bleat. However, Outlook now continually demands his password if sending mail (receiving is fine). It doesn't respond to either his old, original password or to the app password.

So - have checked the Credentials, which look OK; tried another, new, profile, removed end replaced the app password...still no luck. Can anyone see something here that I can't?

 

[Sky-Knight]

Microsoft 365 admin center help

Set up and manage Microsoft 365 in the Microsoft 365 admin center.

docs.microsoft.com

Modern auth for Office 2013 requires registry hackery.

I used to have a script somewhere that would stuff the "EnableADAL"=dword:00000001 key into the correct place, as that's all I had to do to make 2012 work with MFA. But all the details are in the above.

Flip that registry switch and worst you'll have to do is reset the outlook profile to force it to try again with modern auth.

(By the way OAuth is about a heck of a lot more than MFA!, and yes everything should have been using it years ago)

 

[Mick]

Thanks. I thought I'd done that (the reg hack) but maybe it didn't take. I'll fire up regedit and doublecheck.

Edit: Nuts! Bloody customer has switched the thing off. Last thing I told him was 'leave it switched on so I can work on it remotely'. Oh well - he can just do without email till Monday...

 

[Mick]

Update: All now working as it should be. Looking at the registry and reg file, it seems one of the entries didn't 'take' when I first ran it, for some reason. Entered that entry manually and all is fine.

 

[Sky-Knight]

Great news!

Now we'll all wonders why Microsoft hasn't deployed those registry entries to all Outlook 2013 installations by default... that we'll never know!