Enable Modern Authentication for Outlook 2013
A common problem that I have been coming across lately is that since Microsoft increased the security for their Office 365 email services back in August 2022, I have been getting a lot of customers whose Outlook 2013 software will consistently ask for (but will not accept) the user's email account password. This problem is due to the fact that even though Office 2013 does support Modern Authentication, it's actually OFF by default!
Well, I finally found Windows registry modification instructions direct from Microsoft that ACTUALLY work! Applying these Registry modifications to your computer will activate Modern Authentication for your Office and Outlook 2013 software!
You will need to make some registry modifications, however... So back up your system's Registry information BEFORE making ANY modifications!
Proceed at your own risk!
Method #1
Microsoft Office 2013 installed on a Microsoft Windows computer, does support Modern Authentication. But it needs to be enabled; as it is turned off by default! It was a more advanced security feature that was not as widely used at the time.To turn on the Modern Authentication feature, you will need to configure the following registry keys:
That's it!
Pacific Northwest Computers
- Open "Registry Editor"
- Navigate to the Registry Keys below.
- Create a new "DWORD (32bit Value)" for each entry listed below.
- After creating each new "DWORD (32bit Value)", double-click the "DWORD" entry you just created and change its "Value" to 1.
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Exchange\
Key Type: DWORD (32bit Value)
Value Name: AlwaysUseMSOAuthForAutoDiscover
Value: 1
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\15.0\Common\Identity\
Key Type: DWORD (32bit Value)
Value Name: EnableADAL
Value: 1
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\15.0\Common\Identity\
Key Type: DWORD (32bit Value)
Value Name: Version
Value: 1
Method #2
- Make sure that Outlook and any other Office software applications are closed.
- Open up the "Notepad" application; specifically Notepad! Do not use Word or Wordpad, etc.
- Copy and paste the following text into Notepad:
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Exchange] "AlwaysUseMSOAuthForAutoDiscover"=dword:00000001
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\15.0\Common]
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\15.0\Common\Identity] "EnableADAL"=dword:00000001
"Version"=dword:00000001 - Save the file with the file extension ".reg" instead of ".txt" in a location that's easy for you to find. For example, C:\Users\%USERNAME%\Desktop\Office2013_Enable_ModernAuth.reg.
- Open File Explorer (formerly known as Windows Explorer), browse to the location of the ".reg" file you just saved, and then double-click it.
- In the User Account Control dialog that appears next, click Yes to allow the app to make changes to your device.
- In the Registry Editor warning dialog that appears next, click Yes to accept the changes.
- Next, you will need to sign out of your user account and sign back in for the change to take effect. You may even want to just restart your computer.