Microsoft introduces workaround for recent Outlook login issues

If you can't sign in on Outlook with your Outlook.com account, you're not alone. This week, Microsoft confirmed an ongoing sign-in issue on Outlook that it has been investigating.

The bug affects people who try to sign in on Outlook, as well as those who have added their Outlook.com account to their Outlook profile. For the latter, users receive a "password required" request, but providing a password only results in an error dialog that reads, "You cannot log in here with your personal account. Please use your work or school account".

"The Outlook team is investigating the issue in order to make a fix," assured customers. While there is still no permanent solution, the company is offering a workaround to help those affected.

"To resolve this issue, you can turn off Support Diagnostics, which will turn off the option to submit an In App ticket using Help, and then select Contact Support," Microsoft explained in a support document." The bug is related to the way Outlook authenticates for diagnostics in some cases."

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/can-t-sign-in-to-outlook-with-outlook-com-account-ffd58b46-d9af-4a9c-9192-864ca449a1e8

Microsoft has a special document for disabling support diagnostics in Outlook. It details how to enable the DisableSupportDiagnostics policy setting, which will prevent Outlook from communicating customer failure information to support services.

"This policy setting determines whether Outlook can communicate a customer's failure information to support services for the purpose of diagnosing the problem or providing the information to support services to help diagnose/resolve the problem and/or provide contextual error information to the user," the document reads.

Solution for Outlook can't login

To resolve this issue, you can turn off Support Diagnostics, which turns off the option to submit in-app tickets using Help, and then select Contact Support. This bug is related to how Outlook authenticates to diagnostics in some cases.

To turn off Contact Support, set the policy in this article and the following article: Disable Support Diagnostics in Outlook.

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Outlook\Options\General]
"DisableSupportDiagnostics"=dword:00000001

This is how the registry entries appear in the registry editor after they are set.