No longer able to access OWA

Hi Kurt Wampler,

Good day! Thank you for reaching out to the Microsoft Community. We are happy to assist you.

I am sorry to hear that you are experiencing issue with accessing OWA. I apologize for any inconvenience this has caused.

If a user is assigned too many roles, the Office portal can lose its cool and get into an endless redirect loop. Could you please confirm with your admin and ask him to sign in to the Microsoft 365 admin center Sign in to your account to check all the roles you currently have? Please try to remove any roles that are not needed.

If you are a global admin, please check the roles assigned to you in the admin center and unassign any other admin roles in the M365 admin center. Wait for a while for the changes to take effect and then test the issue again.

You can also try to assign yourself a User (no admin center access) role and try again. But please make sure you have a second Global admin account to reassign you an admin role. See more details in the article: About admin roles

Please let us know if there is any progress, we will continue to help you. Have a nice weekend!

Sincerely

Luckie Shi | Community Moderator

Hi Luckie - thank you for your response. I am an end user -- not an administrator. I normally use OWA Basic / Lite from the Edge browser under Windows 11 for sifting efficiently through e-mail. My employer's e-mail is hosted by Microsoft in the cloud. The desktop version of Outlook is still working, but it is far less efficient for me.

There have been repeated warnings about the retirement of OWA Basic / Lite, and I suspect that may finally have occurred yesterday. Needless to say, this does not make me happy. Why kill a good and useful tool?

Anyhow, OWA Standard is still allegedly available, but I am unable to switch to OWA Standard because I can't connect and access my settings. So I am stuck. Is there a way to access my settings and switch to OWA Standard? It won't be as efficient as OWA Lite, but will still be more efficient for me than desktop Outlook.

Update: OWA Lite started working again for me late this afternoon, no longer returning the "error 500" page. I'll take it!

And a sincere plea to Microsoft, please don't disable OWA Lite -- it's a very useful tool for me and others.

Update: OWA Lite stopped working again for me this afternoon, returning the "error 500" page. Still no clue why the sudden change. :(

Hi Kurt Wampler,

My apologies for the delay, and I'm sorry to hear that you're still encountering the error 500.

Since the Lite version has been disabled, we recommend using the Standard version of OWA. I understand that you're seeing the error 500 when you try to open it. In this case, please try switching to a different browser and use InPrivate mode.

If you still can't log in, please check with your IT admin to ensure that Outlook on the web access is enabled for your account. When I tested on my end, I encountered the same error when this option wasn't enabled. Admins can navigate to the Microsoft 365 admin center User Details Panel - Microsoft 365 admin center, go to Users > Active users, click on the username, and then go to Mail > Manage email apps.

If your admin confirms that the option is enabled and you've already tried a different browser, there might be a backend issue that needs further investigation by the support team. Please ask your admin to create a support ticket on your behalf with the Microsoft support team.

Due to the limited permissions and access resources of our forum moderators, we can't collect certain types of log information in public forums for privacy reasons. Microsoft's backend support team should be able to collect more advanced log information, such as Outlook diagnostic logs and PSR logs, through a remote session to diagnose the issue.

Here’s a quick summary of the steps to open a support ticket:

1. Go to the Microsoft 365 Admin Center.

2. Navigate to the Support section.

3. Click on New service request and provide the details of the issues you’re facing.

Your understanding and cooperation are highly appreciated. If you need any help with this process or have further questions, feel free to reach out. I’m here to assist you!

Sincerely

Luckie Shi | Community Moderator