Outlook Password Expiration Notification in Office 365

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Tim Tetrick

 

I know many of you have struggled through the current issue with Office 365 in which users of Outlook 2007 and Outlook 2010 don’t receive notification when their password is about to expire.   In addition, once the password has already expired, Outlook goes into a disconnected state and doesn’t let the user know what the problem is or what action is required to resolve.  This has caused a great deal of end user confusion and lots of Help Desk and/or Support calls.

Well, I’m pleased to announce that updates have recently been released to address this issue.  The hotfix can be downloaded via the links below.  Just remember, though, they require local admin rights to install.  This update is also scheduled to be released via the regular Microsoft Update site within the next couple months.

 

Outlook 2010 -   https://support.microsoft.com/kb/2687351

Outlook 2007 -   https://support.microsoft.com/kb/2687336

 

Once the update is installed, users will receive a pop-up message on the right side of the taskbar letting them know their password is about to expire.

 

When the user clicks on this text, they’ll be taken to the Microsoft Online Portal via browser, where they can change their password.

If the password is already expired, Outlook will display the following.

 

Similarly, when the user clicks on ‘Yes’, they will be taken to the Microsoft Online Portal via browser, where they can change their password.  If the user clicks on ‘No’, then Outlook will quit.  If the user selects ‘No’ to the password update, they still can access their inbox, but Outlook will show a “need password” notification and no new mail will be synced.

For customers who are using Identity Federation via ADFS (Single Sign-On) with Office 365, Outlook mainly relies on the Windows system notification (managed by Active Directory & Domain Controller) for password expiration with Federated users who are using domain joined machines. Outlook will display the above password expiration notifications only for Federated users who are not using domain joined machines and are synchronizing their Active Directory info with the Office 365 Identity management system. 

For more information, please see https://support.microsoft.com/kb/2745588 and https://blogs.technet.com/b/exchange/archive/2012/09/11/office-365-password-expiration-notifications-in-outlook.aspx