There’s a new version of Outlook for Windows, basically a web skin. A lot of people aren’t thrilled about it and are still using the older, standalone version for its better offline capabilities. Unless they can’t… because a weird bug is making error messages pop up and Exchange logins are failing. If you’ve been seeing the alert box above, give it another try — Microsoft says it should be fixed now.
Bleeping Computer spotted the updated page, which says that the service team has implemented changes to work around the problem. Not every instance of the issue is necessarily solved; you’ll need to capture a Fiddler trace to get more specific if you’re still having problems launching the older 2024 version of Outlook. According to the support page, there’s one more workaround if Monday’s fix hasn’t solved the problem. “To workaround the issue, use Outlook Web Access (OWA) or new Outlook for Windows.” Great.
Windows 10 to Windows 11 isn’t the only awkward transition that the company is dealing with at the moment, as plenty of users are less than pleased with the new, “free” version of Outlook that leans more heavily on cloud services. The older, locally-installed version of Outlook 2024 has an official “death date” of April, 2026.
