Outlook always “Trying to connect” followed by “Disconnected”

Usually, this problem is resolved by deleting credentials in the vault, running the MSRA tool, etc. But we had one where even trying to add the account into a new profile would never resolve the autodiscover. Also, clicking on the “Update License” option in any of the Office applications would produce “Something Went Wrong [1001]”

In one particular case, the problem was the machine was missing package information about either the Active Directory Authentication Library (ADAL) or Live ID.

These two commandlets run in user-mode powershell resolved it:

Add-AppxPackage -Register "$env:windir\\SystemApps\\Microsoft.AAD.BrokerPlugin_cw5n1h2txyewy\\Appxmanifest.xml" -DisableDevelopmentMode -ForceApplicationShutdown
Add-AppxPackage -Register "$env:windir\\SystemApps\\Microsoft.Windows.CloudExperienceHost_cw5n1h2txyewy\\Appxmanifest.xml" -DisableDevelopmentMode -ForceApplicationShutdown

If that doesn’t help, try these:

if (-not (Get-AppxPackage Microsoft.AAD.BrokerPlugin)) { Add-AppxPackage -Register "$env:windir\SystemApps\Microsoft.AAD.BrokerPlugin_cw5n1h2txyewy\Appxmanifest.xml" -DisableDevelopmentMode -ForceApplicationShutdown } Get-AppxPackage Microsoft.AAD.BrokerPlugin
if (-not (Get-AppxPackage Microsoft.Windows.CloudExperienceHost)) { Add-AppxPackage -Register "$env:windir\SystemApps\Microsoft.Windows.CloudExperienceHost_cw5n1h2txyewy\Appxmanifest.xml" -DisableDevelopmentMode -ForceApplicationShutdown } Get-AppxPackage Microsoft.Windows.CloudExperienceHost

In another case, the ADAL was already installed so this was necessary to fix it:

  1. Under the problem user: delete or rename these registry keys (if they exist):
    HKCU\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Common\Identity\Identities
    HKCU\SOFTWARE\SyncEngines\Providers\OneDrive
    HKCU\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\OneDrive\Accounts
  2. Log off the affected user and log on as another user that’s an admin on that computer (create one if necessary.)
  3. Delete/rename all these folders in the affected (problem) user:
    C:\Users\[problem user]\AppData\Local\Packages\Microsoft.AAD.BrokerPlugin_cw5n1h2txyewy
    C:\Users\[problem user]\AppData\Local\Microsoft\OneAuth
    C:\Users\[problem user]\AppData\Local\Microsoft\IdentityCache
  4. Reboot the computer and log in as the problem user