Two Outlook Autodiscover settings, which are active in the default setting, often cause problems when setting up Outlook accounts. In the default setting, Outlook always tries to retrieve Autodiscover settings from Microsoft 365, which often leads to problems with on-prem Exchange servers. Furthermore, Outlook also tries to retrieve the Autodiscover settings from the root domain (e.g. https://frankysweb.de/autodiscover/autodiscover.xml), this usually also fails and only delays the process unnecessarily.
However, this behavior can be solved with little effort via group policy or registry entry.
Autodiscover and registry
These two registry entries can be set so that no autodiscover settings from Microsoft 365 and the root domain are queried. This method is suitable for computers that cannot be reached via group policy:
Path: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Outlook\Autodiscover
- DWORD: ExcludeExplicitO365Endpoint
- Value: 1
- DWORD: ExcludeHttpsRootDomain
- Value: 1
If the "Autodiscover" key does not exist, it can simply be created. As a rule, it is not necessary to adjust the version in the path (16.0), as Office 2016, 2019 and 2021 use version 16.0:
After creating the registry entries, only a restart of Outlook is required, the entire computer does not have to be restarted.
Settings via group policy
These values can also be set via GPO, either directly as a registry entry, or even more simply with "Administrative Template files for Office". The "Administrative Template files for Office" can also be used to define many other settings for the Office products. You can find the download here:
Once the template files have been downloaded and unpacked, the contents of the "admx" subdirectory can be copied to the "c:\Windows\PolicyDefinitions" folder on a domain controller:
A new group policy can now be created in the Group Policy Editor and the Autodiscover settings set accordingly:
As soon as the group policy has been applied to the computers, an Outlook restart is sufficient to apply the settings.