Can’t add your Gmail account to Microsoft Outlook Application?

If you are using Microsoft Outlook as your desktop email client for your Gmail account, you might have noticed the never-disappearing authentication dialogue window which keeps saying your login detail is incorrect. Well, Google changed its authorization protocol to the OAuth 2.0, an upgrade from what was previously used. This has been updated across all Google API. At the moment, Google has classified any app that is yet to upgrade to OAuth 2.0 as “less secure app”. It is unfortunate that our beloved Microsoft Outlook fell into this category — a bad attribute for a wonderful product.

The aim of this post is to direct readers, until Microsoft (including other useful apps) does the needful, on how to fix this problem. Assuming you have been using your Gmail account on your Outlook before the recent problem, the step needed to fix this problem is to go to your Google account setting and “Turn on access to Less secure apps”.

You should also allow less secure apps (scroll to the bottom of the linked page), if the former isn’t enough. But I would suggest you follow both steps to be sure. Go back to Microsoft Outlook and enter your login details again.