Back to Community Threads
"New" Outlook and accounts on SmarterMail
Problem reported by Sébastien Riccio - 9/20/2025 at 2:21 PM
Submitted
Hello,

I would like to ask if any of you were able to add an account hosted on SmarterMail on the new Outlook client ?

For my part I tried it in a VM with a fresh win 11 install with Outlook installed part of o365, to add a mailbox but without success. I tried with a MAPI/EWS enabled account, IMAP account... no luck so far.

Same account can be added with the classic outlook or other mail clients (emClient, Thunderbird).

Also it's a pain to troubleshoot as the connections from the New Outlook to our SM server are proxied through their "*ç% cloud, so not really practical when using IP address to search the logs...

Any one had some experience with this ?

Kind regards.
Sébastien Riccio
System & Network Admin
Gabriele Maoret - SERSIS Replied
9/21/2025 at 2:24 AM
The "new Outlook" is a shit... 😅
Gabriele Maoret - Head of SysAdmins and CISO at SERSIS Currently manages 6 SmarterMail installations (1 in the cloud for SERSIS which provides services to a few hundred third-party email domains + 5 on-premise for customers who prefer to have their mail server in-house)
Sébastien Riccio Replied
9/21/2025 at 9:48 AM
 For sure it is :) Still I am wondering if someone was successfully able to use it with SM.

It is now getting pushed quite hard by MS. AFAIK in fresh installs of Win 11 it's kinda pre-installed.
Sébastien Riccio System & Network Admin https://swisscenter.com
D
Douglas Foster Replied
9/21/2025 at 1:14 PM
I would start by tweaking autodiscover.  Some options are probably incompatible with MS need to eavesdrop on the connection
Oliver Replied
9/21/2025 at 2:01 PM
Outlook New cannot use MAPI or EWS, and probably never will be able to. 

IMAP in Outlook New only works flawlessly with Outlook.com and Microsoft365.

Only POP3 will work.
Sébastien Riccio Replied
9/21/2025 at 9:12 PM
Hello Douglas,

I'm afraid there isn't much we can tweak on autodiscover. We already did our best about it and it perfectly works with Outlook Classic, Outlook on mobile, emClient, thunderbird (yeah they added autodiscover support and it surprisingly works quite well to replace autoconfig).

Still I'm going to try to inspect with fiddler, what the New Outlook is sending/receiving during the autodiscover phase, but it does it with MS's cloud, not the server directly...

Kind regards
Sébastien Riccio System & Network Admin https://swisscenter.com
Sébastien Riccio Replied
9/21/2025 at 9:15 PM
Oliver,

So basically we're screwed to provide support for our c ustomers wishing/being forced to use this piece of ...

We tell our customers that MS only care that they client works with their own mail service, but then they says: I was able to add my google account in it without problems...

Pfff :)
Sébastien Riccio System & Network Admin https://swisscenter.com
Sabatino Replied
9/24/2025 at 3:44 AM
A response from SM would be appropriate
Sabatino Traini Chief Information Officer Genial s.r.l. Martinsicuro - Italy
D
Douglas Foster Replied
9/24/2025 at 4:29 AM
We need reasonable expectations of our vendors.   SmarterMail works with a whole bunch or protocols and a whole bunch of products.   Microsoft is dropping a product that works well in a multi-vendor environment and replaced it with a product that only works well in a proprietary environment because Microsoft made undocumented and proprietary changes to the protocols for the purpose of intercepting client traffic.    SmarterMail could attempt to reverse-engineer their code, at great expense.   But even after doing so, they would be endlessly harrassed for the thousand little things that were not reverse-engineered perfectly.   

If you have followed the complaints on this forum over the years, you know that problems can occur with time zones, character sets, languages, calendar sync, message sync, and client authentication.    And whatever reverse-engineering works in New Outlook v1, it may be demolished in Outlook v2.

Does nobody asks why we needed a New Outlook that was not upward compatible with the widely-used original?

Does anybody ask if we need Outlook at all?   I have Outlook 2021 available on my computer, but I use it very rarely.   It is really good for sorting messages to finding old ones to be discarded.    For everything else, I use webmail.    This was not forced on me, it just happened naturally because webmail is very functional.

If clients want to contribute their data toward Microsoft's success in Generative AI, they should not be using SmarterMail.   If they had any awareness of the exposed security holes in Office365, they would not be using that platform at all.

To my mind, New Outlook is inherently unethical.   

End of rant.

Doug Foster
Doug 
Oliver Replied
9/24/2025 at 4:51 AM
Sébastien,

Sorry, IMAP now seems to work with Gmail in Outlook New. However, you can find lots of reports online about problems with Outlook New and IMAP.

The biggest problem with Outlook New is that it synchronizes all emails from your IMAP or POP account to the Microsoft Cloud. For this reason, we advise all customers against using it. We have banned Outlook New from the network for customers whose IT we manage.

This is another step by Microsoft to move everything to their cloud, and if you look at Microsoft's roadmap, it's another step toward killing Outlook Classic.

It is becoming increasingly important to introduce customers to alternatives to Outlook, otherwise we will face a huge problem in about 5 years when Outlook Classic is no longer available!
Derek Curtis Replied
9/24/2025 at 6:33 AM
Employee Post
A workaround for this is to create protocol-specific autodiscover records. We've found that doing this, especially for IMAP and POP, can at least connect the account.


100% fully on board with people moving away from it. Old habits and familiarity are hard to combat, though. 
Derek Curtis COO SmarterTools Inc. www.smartertools.com
Sabatino Replied
9/24/2025 at 6:39 AM
Personally, I've always discouraged Outlook.
It always seemed like a dinosaur to me, a cannon for shooting a small bird. Most users use it in a very basic way to read email. I personally recommend emclient, even though I have many clients with Thunderbird.
However, my concern was that it wouldn't work with imap which would have created quite a few problems with customers.
Sabatino Traini Chief Information Officer Genial s.r.l. Martinsicuro - Italy
Matt Petty Replied
9/24/2025 at 7:17 AM
Employee Post
Ya'll dont wanna hear my personal opinions on Outlook new or old. But I can say we've established communications with eM Client and they send us bugs, we send them bugs, I've met one of their developers during an email conference in London, we talk about the future of email and authentication with them, they integrate SmarterMail specific APIs in their client to get a premium experience.
Meanwhile Microsoft is.... nowhere to be found. 

P.S: Thunderbird is on mobile now and has been getting updates, also met some of their devs during that same conference with eM Client.
Matt Petty Senior Software Developer SmarterTools Inc. www.smartertools.com
M
Mike Mulhern Replied
9/24/2025 at 10:50 AM
I would love for my users to only use webmail----but it isn't all the way there in my opinion---to post yet again where I think it needs improvement in the order of importance:
  1. Auto-complete addresses to mirror how Outlook works
    1. https://portal.smartertools.com/community/a93763/new-email-to-auto-fill.aspx\
  2. In New Email ability to open PDFs after upload before sending
  3. More robust search functionality
Some of these users would be better using Eudora other than the new outlook.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eudora_(email_client)
www.HawaiianHope.org - Providing technology services to non profit organizations, low income families, homeless shelters, clean and sober houses and prisoner reentry programs. Since 2015, We have refurbished over 11,000 Computers !
kevind Replied
9/25/2025 at 8:33 AM
Mike, good point! Let's improve webmail so users don't need an email client.

Another webmail enhancement:
Back to Community Threads

Reply to Thread

Enter the verification text
Related Knowledge Base Articles
Microsoft Outlook PST vs OST vs OLM -- What's the Difference?SmarterMail > Desktop and Mobile Synchronization
How to Thoroughly Replace Your MAPI AccountSmarterMail > Troubleshooting
Set Up a MAPI Account in Outlook 2016 and Above for WindowsSmarterMail > Desktop and Mobile Synchronization
Import/Export a PST File Using OutlookSmarterMail > Desktop and Mobile Synchronization
Add to Outlook LimitationsSmarterMail > Desktop and Mobile Synchronization