Microsoft will soon block Outlook 2010 and earlier from connecting to Microsoft 365 Exchange servers

Companies are often dead-slow in upgrading their deployed software, and if your setup is ancient you may soon run into trouble connecting to a Microsoft 365 Exchange server in the cloud.

Microsoft has announced that after November 1, 2021, only Outlook 2013 Service Pack 1 (with latest fixes) and later will be able to connect to Microsoft 365 services.

Older versions of Outlook such as Outlook 2007 and 2010 are incompatible with the following upcoming service changes:

• Support for basic authentication is ending to increase the security of Microsoft 365 by relying on modern authentication protocols, which are not only more secure, but also provide compliance and policy controls to help you manage your data.
• Microsft is working on adding support for HTTP/2 in Microsoft 365. HTTP/2 is a full duplex protocol, which decreases latency through header compression and request multiplexing.

Microsoft notes new clients are more secure, have many new features and have 75% fewer crashes.

Outlook 2007, 2010, and Office 2013 versions earlier than 15.0.4971.1000 have also not been supported for some time, but Microsoft acknowledges that some customers just can’t quit them.

Microsoft says they are actively reaching out to tenants that have the most usage on Outlook 2007 and 2010 to help them meet the deadline and suggests users with older installations contact Customer Service.

Read more in their blog post here.

via DrWindows