Can't connect to Office 365 mail account via Apple Mail (Exchange)

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Level 1

4 points

Can't connect to Office 365 mail account via Apple Mail (Exchange)

I recently upgraded to OS X Yosemite, but had this problem before upgrading as well. I have an Office 365 mail account, but cannot sync it via Apple Mail. I went into my Apple Mail accounts and tried connecting my Office 365 account through the Exchange option, but it will not connect. From my knowledge, this is not an uncommon problem but it is very inconvenient. Is there any way to get around the glitch, or anything I should be doing differently? I do know a couple people with Office 365 accounts who have been able to make it work, but they apparently did not do anything differently when setting up their account.

Mac Pro, OS X Yosemite (10.10)

Posted on Nov 22, 2014 9:12 PM

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Answer 1

Linc Davis

Level 10

209,547 points

Nov 22, 2014 9:49 PM in response to emajumdar

Sometimes this issue is caused by a misconfiguration or incompatibility of the Exchange server, or perhaps by a bug in Mail. If so, you won't be able to resolve it yourself. The fact that your iOS devices may be working well with the same account isn't relevant, because iOS uses a completely different protocol (ActiveSync) to communicate with Exchange servers. By default, OS X Mail uses the EWS protocol.

Each of the following steps has been reported to help with Exchange issues, at least temporarily, in some cases:

1. Back up all data. Open the Internet Accounts pane in System Preferences and check to make sure you don't have duplicate Exchange accounts. If you do, delete all but one of the duplicates. If there are no duplicates, delete the account and recreate it with the same settings.

2. Rebuild the affected mailbox.

3. Reindex messages.

4. Follow the instructions in this support article to disable autodiscovery. You may need to get configuration details from the server administrator.

5. In the Keychain Access application, delete the password item for the account. The next time Mail tries to access the account, you'll be prompted for the password. Check the box to save it in the Keychain.

6. If you've created subfolders of the Exchange inbox, log in to the server through its web interface, move the messages out, and remove the subfolders. The inbox should have no subfolders.

7. Synchronize with the server using IMAP rather than EWS. This is only possible if IMAP is enabled on the server.

8. Consider using Outlook instead of Mail to access your Exchange mail.