How log in to mail Outlook on Epyrus?

[Donieck69]

Hi! I want to use Epyrus on Windows with Outlook mail, but I don't have log in to my account on Outlook mail.

Thank for any advice

[Bilbo47]

Have to create "App Passwords" and use one of those in EP. Drat, this *used to* work for me but not now.

[Moonchild]

No, Microsoft has locked this down completely at the moment. I haven't been able to get this to work anymore either. They pretty much force you to buy into the Microsoft ecosystem if you want to use hotmail/live mail/outlook mail (not that it costs you anything but only "approved" mail clients work with it. And no, you can't automagically adopt your Windows login for it like outlook can if you log into your windows with your Microsoft account.

Update your sign-in technology before September 16th, 2024 to maintain email access.

The safety and security of your information is top priority for Microsoft. To help keep your account secure, Microsoft will no longer support the use of third-party email and calendar apps which ask you to sign in with only your Microsoft Account username and password. To keep you safe you will need to use a mail or calendar app which supports Microsoft’s modern authentication methods. If you do not act, your third-party email apps will no longer be able to access your Outlook.com, Hotmail or Live.com email address on September 16th.



What do you need to do?

If you are receiving this email, you are currently using an email or calendar app that uses a less secure authentication method to connect to your Outlook.com email account. You will need to upgrade your third-party mail and calendar app to a version which supports modern authentication methods.


Microsoft provides free versions of Outlook for your PC, Mac, iOS, and Android devices which can be easily downloaded and connect to your email account. Using an updated version of an Outlook application will ensure you are connecting in the most secure way.


How can you set up your Gmail, Apple Mail, or other third-party mail application?

Various non-Microsoft applications will have their own steps for connecting to your Outlook.com email account using modern authentication methods. See our help article - Modern Authentication Methods now needed to continue syncing Outlook Email in non-Microsoft email apps. However, you may need to contact the creators of those applications to provide you with instructions.

The claimed "modern authentication methods" basically means OAuth2, which Epyrus does support but requires either a unique set of credentials for your account, or an application set of credentials (which Microsoft will have to provide to Epyrus, which they have not, last I checked)

[Bilbo47]

OAuth2 ... requires a set of credentials

I looked at doing this, similar to how we did it for GMail, but it was more convoluted and thus didn't get very far

[Bilbo47]

you can't automagically adopt your Windows login for it like outlook can if you log into your windows with your Microsoft account.

Off-topic:
As a web+database developer in 2008, our web-app was able to pass the windows user through to the database backend, to grant data-permissions at a user-level of granularity. Updates to user permissions and therefore access to app-features were intended to be transparent / invisible to the app. IIS did this one way and Apache did it another way. The Microsoft way was more difficult. And by that I mean, this little maneuver was in the top three pinnacles of my developer capabilties ever.

Windows has had "single sign-on" infra since Ye Olden Days, and it has been used on corporate intRAnets forever. The fact that no one other than MS uses it for intERnet tells us how hard it is to write.

[athenian200]

I'm the developer of Epyrus, and this is a big problem for me too, because the vast majority of my e-mail accounts are on Microsoft infrastructure. The only one that's working for me on Epyrus right now is my GMail account.

As always, I don't really know what to do about this problem, and I've known it was coming for a while. I have an Outlook 365 e-mail that I've been meaning to play around with to see if I can get credentials that work for at least my personal e-mail in Epyrus via that route, but so far it just feels like the way you generate the credentials is in flux, and it's hard to generate something that will work with Epyrus.

But yeah, this is pretty much the reason why Epyrus development is stalled out aside from security updates right now. I'm demoralized because it's no longer personally useful to me. I get that there's a use for an e-mail client that can't support OAuth2, but I personally just don't have much use for one myself... and I'm developing it.

[suzyne]

I'm demoralized because it's no longer personally useful to me. I get that there's a use for an e-mail client that can't support OAuth2, but I personally just don't have much use for one myself...

I want to say something that would be encouraging, but I don't know what that is?

It's regrettable that Microsoft (and others) have to complicate what should be a straightforward process of giving over a username followed by a password to access an email account.

Totally understandable that your energy and enthusiasm is fading for a program that is much less useful to you.

[Night Wing]

I have a Hotmail account which I have had for over 20 years. And this was "before" Microsoft bought Hotmail. Speaking just for myself, Microsoft buying Hotmail was the worst thing to happen to Hotmail.

Back on point.

Now when I want to access my Hotmail account, I have to sign in and then I am "redirected" to my Microsoft account page along with other things trying to monetize me with programs which do not install in any of the three linux distros I use. I guess MS thinks the entire world uses the Windows operating system.

But here is the kicker. Once I am on the Microsoft page, I have to scroll all the way down the page to access my Hotmail email account by clicking on (Outlook.com). This opens up another tab which takes me to my Hotmail account. After I am though my Hotmail, then I click on Log Out, I am redirected to the my Microsoft account page again.

When I logged out of that page, I was immediately redirected to another page which told me I did not give MS my mobile telephone number. And I will never consent to that.

So I said myself, if MS want to play hardball, I'll play, but I will play by my own hardball rules. Not MS's rules. Remember when I was redirected when I logged out of my Hotmail email account?

As soon as I am on my Hotmail account, since the MS account page is waiting for me in the other tab, I click on the "X" button at the top of that tab thereby killing the tab which is my MS accounts page.

And when I do log out of my Hotmail account, I click on my "Home" button so fast, I cannot be redirected to any MS page.

In closing.

I do not like the way MS thinks it is going to install a ring in my nose and then attach a leash to the nose ring so MS can lead me around by the nose ring.

[Moonchild]

I'm demoralized because it's no longer personally useful to me. I get that there's a use for an e-mail client that can't support OAuth2, but I personally just don't have much use for one myself... and I'm developing it.

I completely understand and can relate to this. I've been in very much the same boat with Pale Moon several times, as the web's been pushing ridiculous, hard-to-implement "new things" that often don't even have a use other than the implied use the very vendors implementing them push upon the web dev community (or through various frameworks), i.e. they weren't actually requested by web devs a lot of the time before they existed.

What I do in that situation is remind myself there are many thousands of people who don't visit problematic sites and for whom Pale Moon is exactly what they want in a browser. I keep using Pale Moon as my default with only some sites in an alternative browser that (at least for now) "don't play ball" with Pale Moon to "dogfood" my project.
I understand it would be different for you if your main use of Epyrus is, in fact, on mail services operated by one of the few vendors that simply push hard to lock users into their ecosystem (or commercial partners), and if you have very little daily use of it, you'd feel disconnected from the very software you're developing. I don't have much of a suggestion for you if that's a problem, other than considering not putting all your eggs into the Microsoft basket for mail (It's useful to have multiple e-mail providers, I've found over the years, even if I run my own MTA!), or otherwise if that's a no-go, to offer Epyrus' maintenance up for someone else to take over the helm. Sometimes doing your best is simply not enough for the greater picture, and someone else might be better suited.

But either way I do hope you do something, and not just let the mail client go stale and unmaintained for too long. If I didn't already have past experience I simply can't maintain it next to my existing work for the browser and platform, I'd offer, but I know where that ends up (unmaintained for different reasons...)

[athenian200]

I completely understand and can relate to this. I've been in very much the same boat with Pale Moon several times, as the web's been pushing ridiculous, hard-to-implement "new things" that often don't even have a use other than the implied use the very vendors implementing them push upon the web dev community (or through various frameworks), i.e. they weren't actually requested by web devs a lot of the time before they existed.

What I do in that situation is remind myself there are many thousands of people who don't visit problematic sites and for whom Pale Moon is exactly what they want in a browser. I keep using Pale Moon as my default with only some sites in an alternative browser that (at least for now) "don't play ball" with Pale Moon to "dogfood" my project.

Right, I guess the difference is... the vast majority of people use Outlook, Gmail, Yahoo, or AOL e-mail. There's not much variety like there is with websites... there are so many websites to choose from that all do things differently, but very few e-mail providers, and the vast majority have rolled out OAuth2 which I believe will limit the usefulness of Epyrus over time. It's a lot more centralized and locked-down, with a much smaller ecosystem of alternatives compared to the web. There are a couple of annoying workarounds for Gmail, but nothing for the other providers. I mean, I guess there is the occasional odd person who runs their own MTA and is willing to fight with spam filters, and maybe the occasional corporation that runs their own MTA and might want something like this for their employees... but that really limits Epyrus to very, very specialized environments that like traditional e-mail for whatever reason.

I understand it would be different for you if your main use of Epyrus is, in fact, on mail services operated by one of the few vendors that simply push hard to lock users into their ecosystem (or commercial partners), and if you have very little daily use of it, you'd feel disconnected from the very software you're developing. I don't have much of a suggestion for you if that's a problem, other than considering not putting all your eggs into the Microsoft basket for mail (It's useful to have multiple e-mail providers, I've found over the years, even if I run my own MTA!), or otherwise if that's a no-go, to offer Epyrus' maintenance up for someone else to take over the helm. Sometimes doing your best is simply not enough for the greater picture, and someone else might be better suited.

But either way I do hope you do something, and not just let the mail client go stale and unmaintained for too long. If I didn't already have past experience I simply can't maintain it next to my existing work for the browser and platform, I'd offer, but I know where that ends up (unmaintained for different reasons...)

Yeah, the main problem right now is that both my school e-mail and the personal e-mail I've used for over 12 years are on Microsoft. I can create another e-mail address to use with Epyrus (and maybe check on some old accounts I have lying around that I could start using again if they work), but I will need access to both of those e-mail addresses for the foreseeable future.

I think I just really need to sit down with the problem, look at what I can do as far as workarounds, even crappy workarounds... see if there's anything I can do, and if I've satisfied myself there isn't, then I just accept that things aren't going to get better in that regard and do what I can with Epyrus as it is. There has also been school and the holidays of course, but I feel like I still should have put more time into this.

[Donieck69]

Thanks for answers

[Massacre]

Yeah, the main problem right now is that both my school e-mail and the personal e-mail I've used for over 12 years are on Microsoft. I can create another e-mail address to use with Epyrus (and maybe check on some old accounts I have lying around that I could start using again if they work), but I will need access to both of those e-mail addresses for the foreseeable future.

Create a classic email account (preferrably on your own domain and VPS) then set all cloud oauth2-only emails to forward there?

[glime]

Did you try to follow the suggestions given in the Thunderbird forum: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/mi ... erbird-202

[Keith Moon]

Yeah, the main problem right now is that both my school e-mail and the personal e-mail I've used for over 12 years are on Microsoft. I can create another e-mail address to use with Epyrus (and maybe check on some old accounts I have lying around that I could start using again if they work), but I will need access to both of those e-mail addresses for the foreseeable future.

I've resorted to forwarding my emails from Outlook.com to another email address that I can use with Epyrus, iOS 12, and others. Every couple of weeks, I need to log into Outlook.com, just to make sure Junk Filters did not claw back some of the messages, but that problem improves the more senders I mark as not Junk.

I was going to switch to Betterbird, but since I already forward mail for my older phones, I may as well stay with Epyrus on the desktop.

[back2themoon]

The forwarding workaround sounds quite good. Unless I'm mistaken, the point of forwarding is to not exclude anything i.e. potential messages marked as Spam etc. and just forward everything.

But I could be wrong here. Depends on each service implementation, perhaps.

[Bilbo47]

suggestions in the Thunderbird forum: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/mi ... erbird-202

Good to be aware of, but this is not a new problem. It basically boils down to "the big / free email providers want more user-identification than basic/password auth requires, so they are all switching to OAuth". But then they gatekeep OAuth access by allowing only certain "approved" email clients. If you're using an email app other than the few they have accepted by identifying the author, then you don't get in. The "workarounds" that allow identification of a user instead of an author are prohibitively convoluted.

The bottom line is, use paid email not free email, unless you really want to be the product.

[ko567]

I don't use Outlook, and I know almost nothing about OAuth2, but I am interested in the welfare of Epyrus.

So I happened to find https://github.com/oauth2-proxy/oauth2-proxy?tab=readme-ov-file, and I'm posting it here in the hope that it has some relevance to the Outlook/OAuth2 problem. If not, please disregard.

[athenian200]

I don't use Outlook, and I know almost nothing about OAuth2, but I am interested in the welfare of Epyrus.

So I happened to find https://github.com/oauth2-proxy/oauth2-proxy?tab=readme-ov-file, and I'm posting it here in the hope that it has some relevance to the Outlook/OAuth2 problem. If not, please disregard.

I appreciate the suggestion. I feel like anything that has found a way to interface with OAuth2 could potentially help, if it allows me to mirror the authentication flow... it looks like some applications can get a token dynamically without having to have a predefined client ID/client secret?

[geraldh]

Just in case anyone is looking for a free email address that works on Epyrus, I and other family members have been using GMX mail https://www.gmx.com/ for several years without issues. My Yahoo account also works fine, though I had to set up some kind of app password as I recall.

[Keith Moon]

Is there going to be further development on this mail client, or is the Outlook OAuth2 issue holding that up?

By the way @geraldh, thanks for the suggestion about GMX.