I just happened to be doing a fresh install. I wasn’t totally satisfied with 1903 and wanted to give it a few more weeks to mature.
I went to setup Outlook 2019 (Desktop) with my gmail and outlook accounts and I noticed something peculiar. This time setting up outlook services basically forced me to log into persistently into Office 2019. This wasn’t exactly what I wanted. I just wanted my email and calendar setup. I don’t need to Microsoft recording a usage profile while I use Office.
I tried a couple of different things.
- I tried manually setting up exchange via advanced options but it required me to enter an email address. When I put in my outlook email it basically went back through the same process and forced a login to Office. IT also setups an account record in windows 10 with giving Microsoft the ability to automatically sign in with the credentials any time a Microsoft app asks for them (no thanks!).
- I tried selecting exchange with advanced options and entered a gibberish email address such as [email protected] for instance. I was hoping the auto discover would fail and it would allow me to setup the server settings manually. No such luck…
- I just relented and let outlook do what it wanted and it logged me in via office and setup an account profile in windows 10. This time I launched word and logged out of office. This unfortunately prevents me from retrieving my email and it naggs me for a password. And you guessed it… entering a password automatically logs you back in. Slight variation to this method. I deleted the account profile in windows 10 Email & app section and I had similar results.
Looks like there isn’t a way to use outlook email/calendar services unless you give your soul to the cloud. If I have to I can sandbox Outlook by only interacting with it via the web but that is not exactly what I wanted. The Desktop app is still quite useful to me. I could also manually setup via IMAP… annoying.. but I suppose that is an option.
Any ideas? I look hosed…