Connected accounts are being deprecated in Office 365

The Connected accounts feature basically works as an email client, which connects to and fetches messages from Gmail, Yahoo or any other IMAP/POP account. While Connected accounts have certainly never been the most popular feature, they were useful for scenarios where you wanted to keep messages from all your email accounts across different providers in the same mailbox.

Now, Microsoft is deprecating support for the feature and will soon remove it from the service. No announcements or any other type of communication has been published on this yet, but those should be coming in the next few days/weeks. In the meantime, the official documentation has been updated with the following warning:

Important: Microsoft will be removing the ability to add new accounts to Outlook on the web using the Connected accounts feature in September 2018.​

    • You won’t be able to connect new accounts after September 15, 2018.
    • Accounts that were connected before September 15th will continue to sync as usual until October 30, 2018.
    • On October 30th, all connected accounts will stop syncing email.
    • On November 15th, the Connected accounts option (Settings > Mail > Accounts) will be removed from Outlook on the web .
    • Email that has already synced will continue to appear in your inbox unless you remove it manually.​

In addition, the following alternatives have been suggested for people who want to keep receiving all their messages in the same account.

Notes: To continue seeing email from other accounts:

As evident from the above text, the timeframe of this deprecation is rather short, so I decided to do my part and spread some awareness as well. Note that this deprecation only affects Office 365, for the time being Connected accounts in Outlook.com are safe.

12 thoughts on “Connected accounts are being deprecated in Office 365

  1. Dave says:

    Hi,
    Was there any resolution to this.
    I’m about to purchase office 365 business, and this may be a deal breaker.
    I want to be able to send and receive emails through the web app for a non-microsoft email account.
    Can this be done some other way?
    thanks

    Reply
    1. Vasil Michev says:

      Not sure what you expect to be resolved here, as the functionality is deprecated now. If you need this, you can use a consumer Outlook.com account.

      Reply
  2. P. Ip says:

    While Microsoft decided to remove “connected account” from Office 365, the same functionality is available as “Sync email” for outlook.com email accounts. This really does not make any sense as both are handled by the same Exchange infrastructure on the backend.

    Reply
  3. Tim says:

    In MS’s announcement to Office 365 admins on this in their Weekly Digest, they stated: “We’re investing our development resources in a feature-rich way for you and your users to connect other accounts to Outlook on the web. Future changes will allow users to sync calendars and contacts with other email accounts.”

    I cannot find any other reference to this other than the email that I received on 8/20/2018. I cannot find any new feature that allows this. Have you seen anything more on this that I missed?

    Reply
  4. EJJ says:

    I am also in search of ‘Outlook in the cloud’. Any suggestions?

    Reply
  5. Mike Cosmin says:

    I don’t get this… Office 365 mail with connected accounts was my solution for “Outlook” in the cloud. Now they offer no alternative but the free and extremely limited Outlook.com. I am willing to pay for a good email client in the cloud.

    Do you know of other solution for an email client in the cloud (aka Outlook in the cloud)?

    Reply
  6. Kevin says:

    I just don’t get this. What about people who have multiple MS Office accounts? I can combine my 1sr business email, second business email, personal email, and real job email in outlook but if I want to use the webmail I have to login to all four accounts separately?

    Reply
    1. Vasil Michev says:

      Kevin, make sure to leave this feedback with Microsoft, there’s hardly anything I can do in terms of feature deprecation.

      You should still be able to use Connected accounts in Outlook.com, then again if you don’t already have an @outlook.com, that brings the total to five…

      Reply
  7. Hans van Dijk says:

    In office 365 I noticed that when I remove a connection, the synchronisation doesn’t stop.
    Any sugestion? Remove it with powershell?

    Reply
    1. Vasil Michev says:

      Afaik the UI uses the exact same PowerShell cmdlets on the backend, so it shouldn’t make a difference. The feature is still supported by the end of next month though, so if you still have the issue you can open a support case.

      Reply
    2. Chandrashekar R says:

      Hi,

      I am having a similar problem. I forgot to remove the connection before the deadline but the synchronization is still continuing. Any ideas how to stop the synchronization?

      Thanks,
      /rc

      Reply
      1. Vibeke says:

        I have the same issue. My mails are still being synced but I cannot see them as connected accounts in Outlook 365.
        How do I stop the sync of the mails from connected account?
        Thanks.

        Reply

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