Setting up Thunderbird for OAUTH2 on Linux

Tags: Faq Linuxtips

Just some quick screenshots to show what’s needed. This is the complete sequence of steps to get an unconfigured version of Thunderbird connected. If you’re already a Thunderbird user, you’ll presumably know how to get into the “accounts” settings!

On first startup, Thunderbird will take you straight into a dialogue to create your first account.

On this screen, just enter your Aber email address. This will enabled the “Configure manually” button:

Click it and then select “Advanced config” and select “OK” at the next warning dialogue:

At the next screen, you first need to fill in the “Server Settings” section:

You need:

Server name: outlook.office365.com
Port: 993
User Name: your_email_address@aber.ac.uk
Connection Security: SSL/TLS
Authentication method: OAuth2

Next, navigate to the “Outgoing Server (SMTP)” section and click “Edit…”:

Yet another dialogue will appear:

In this one, you need:

Server name: outlook.office365.com
Port: 587 (the default)
Connection security: STARTTLS
Authentication method: OAuth2
User Name: your-address@aber.ac.uk

You can leave the rest blank. Hit OK when done.

N.B. Once, while testing this procedure, the OAuth2 option was missing from the “Authentication method” dropdown. I hit cancel and re-selected “Edit…” at the previous screen and it was then available.

In theory, this completes the procedure. In practise, I’ve found that Thunderbird doesn’t activate the newly created account until you’ve exited (from the “hamburger” menu at the top right) and restarted Thunderbird:

When you restart, it should bring up the usual Office365 login screen, Thunderbird should be able to access your “cloud stored” emails: