Problem: Outlook 2007 doesn’t play nice with Office 365 Out-of-the-Box
When you combine Office 2007 & Office 365 you may experience a password dilemma that can drive a tech to a tipping point where no matter how well you configure either automatically or manually the password does not take on the Outlook 2007 client software. Here is how to fix this and how I discovered some great posts on the Internet on it as well. One of the points of this post is that when looking for a resolution I must have found at least a dozen different ways to fix this problem but only one worked, so in order to save you some time here is the way I did it and hopefully it will save you some time.
Background: Office 2007 … its still around?
Yes, Office 2007 is still a product I find many small law firms and companies use due to the simplicity and cost savings so you may find it as well still prevalent even in these days of online everything (SAAS). Along with that Office 365 paves the way and makes having an exchange server a true reality for many small law firms and businesses without the need for all the infrastructure and exchange admin support. I highly recommend Office 365 and Exchange Online as it is a real cost saver for those small firms.
Lets Do It: Making Office 2007 & Office 365 Play Nice
Now Office 365 has many plans for businesses and personal plans but the starter plan only offers online software and no licenses to the new desktop software. So if a client chooses this option using the existing Office software they have on hand is what makes sense.
So the simple breakdown is this:
- Install Office 2007*
- Install Office 2007 SP3
- Install KB2768023
That’s it, I try to keep it KISS. Now of course you should install all the Microsoft updates recommended for the computer and applications initially but I wanted to know the minimal steps to get it working right away. *Now a note about Office 2007 and this issue. I tested this on many flavors of Office 2007 including Basic, Pro & Enterprise. Same issue occurred in conjunction with Office 365 and the stand-alone Exchange Online package. Along with that I found the solution after trying multiple times on a virtual machine with multiple methods discovered online which were all great solutions offered but time is critical & you want a good 1-2 punch to knock out that problem right away.
Now the reason this KB2768023 is necessary is due to the fact that without it you will never get the infamous “Anonymous Authentication” option that is required for Outlook to talk to Office 365. And you will wonder, hmm where the heck is that option at?
Now, we are good to go.
Mark Arambula
Reference: Helpful Articles
- Anonymous Authentication not available in Outlook 2007
- Persistent Outlook Password Prompts For Office 365
