Starting November 1st, 2021, only Outlook 2013 SP1 (build 15.0.4971.1 and greater) will be able to connect to Microsoft 365 services. This means older Outlook 2013 builds, and Outlook 2010 and earlier will not connect to Microsoft 365. This new requirement goes hand in hand with the deprecation of basic auth, requiring Outlook 2013 SP1 (build 15.0.4753.1 and greater). Microsoft is deprecating basic auth on October 1st, 2022.
That said, if you are already blocking legacy auth for Outlook clients (or you are reading this post after October 1st, 2022), you may receive the following error when trying to sign in to your Office 365 account with Outlook 2013 or any other Office suite product. In addition, your Outlook 2013 client might not be able to connect to your Office 365 mailbox either.
When signing in to your Office 365 account via File > Office Account > Sign In from any Office suite product, you receive the following error.
Your account is in a bad state. Please sign-in to this account online to address the issue.
Alternatively, you may first see the error below which can then lead to the error above when you click the Fix me button.
Account Error: There are problems with your account. To fix them, please sign in again.
How to fix “Your account is in a bad state”
You will receive this error despite your Outlook 2013 build being at 15.0.4971.1 or greater. This is because you need a few more hotfixes.
- KB3085565 – this hotfix is well documented by Microsoft as required for modern authentication and it will update your ADAL.DLL file version to 1.0.2019.909.
- KB4462201 – this hotfix will update your MSO.DLL to 15.0.5119.1000.
- KB3172545 – this hotfix will update your CSI.DLL to 15.0.4941.1000.
To check the file versions of these three DLLs, navigate to C:\Program Files (x86) > Common Files > Microsoft Shared > Office 15.
You will also need the following two registry keys in place to enable modern authentication for Office 2013. Open the registry editor and navigate to HKCU\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\15.0\Common\Identity. Create two DWORDs under this folder called EnableADAL and Version. Modify each DWORD to have a value of 1.
Once you have applied all these hotfixes and registry keys, reboot your PC.
Then sign in to your Office 365 account from any of the Office programs. I recommend doing this from Word, rather than Outlook. Especially if Outlook was failing to connect to your Office 365 mailbox. From Word navigate to File > Office Account > Sign In and proceed through the sign-in process. If your Outlook client was also failing to connect to your Office 365 mailbox, this should now also be resolved without any further remediation required.
Have you run into this error before? What did you do to fix it? Drop a comment below or join the conversation on Twitter @SuperTekBoy.
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