The truth is rarely pure and never simple

Office 365 and Email Settings

When adding my email inbox from UCL to the K9 android email client, I got the problem that this does not work out of the box: K9 cannot connect to the Office 365 server. Unfortunately, I am forced to use Office 365 here. While I am not too convinced that this is the optimal tool for the job, it has the nice option of combining Exchange and IMAP/SMTP into one account. (Of course, this is also possible with a plain Exchange server…)

Using the stock android email client gave me this message which is highly unpleasant:

The server outlook.office365.com requires that you allow it to remotely control some security features of your Android device. Do you want to finish setting up this account?

In particular the imprecise term “some security features” is highly suspicious to me. Unfortunately, there is no general way of not accepting this but still getting access to the emails. For some users, this approach may work: use the IMAP/SMTP protocol for emails if it has been enabled by your provider (thanks, UCL IT, for keeping this enabled). Here is how:

Log into your OWA / Office 365 account. Select the cog in the upper right and go to the “Options” panel.
Screen Shot 2015-08-17 at 15.31.59

Then select the “POP and IMAP” in the left pane:
Screen Shot 2015-08-17 at 15.33.44
which gives you the server information. The username and password are the same as for the Outlook web interface. These credentials work for the stock android email client as well as for the K9 alternative.

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