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Every certain period of time I got logged out from Outlook Web App, part of Office 365, automatically like every hour without any apparent reason, and the message reads:

You signed out of your account

It's a good idea to close all browser windows.

You signed out of your account. It's a good idea to close all browser windows.

URL after being logged out: https://login.microsoftonline.com/login.srf?wa=wsignoutcleanup1.0&wreply=https%3a%2f%2flogin.microsoftonline.com%2fcommon%2foauth2%2flogoutredirect&id=501148

Some other times it's redirected to the error page on the unexpected out-of-blue signout event:

AADSTS50061: Unable to complete signout. The request was invalid. Sorry, but we’re having trouble signing you in.

which reads:

Sign in

Sorry, but we’re having trouble signing you in.

AADSTS50061: Unable to complete signout. The request was invalid.

Request Id: a72e1b72-f1aa-4021-9bb6-b56274312400

Correlation Id: 42d9b0be-40e5-43d8-b0cf-beccd7da6afc

Timestamp: 2018-03-07T17:14:13Z

Message: AADSTS50061: Unable to complete signout. The request was invalid.

The URL then is: https://login.microsoftonline.com/common/oauth2/logoutredirect

It's a company's business e-mail and I'm using only one account.

I really cannot stand it anymore and it's not usable for me.

How I can fix it? Is there any settings that can be changed, or any other workaround?

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  • 11
    I 100% agree with you that this makes it almost unusable. It only started this very recently. The fact that the message reads "You signed out of your account" as though this was my action makes it all the more infuriating. NO I DIDN'T! On support.office.com/en-us/article/…, it states that the timeout is only six hours and you can modify it using the ActivityBasedAuthenticationTimeoutInterval parameter of the Set-OrganizationConfig cmdlet. No idea if it can be modified through the admin web interface.
    – Arian Kulp
    Commented Mar 19, 2018 at 20:20
  • 1
    I do not believe it can be set through the admin web interface. I tried changing this using the PS cmdlet and discovered that the maximum allowed value is 08:00:00 (8 hours), which isn't much of a help.
    – dk.
    Commented Oct 15, 2018 at 3:11

4 Answers 4

Reset to default
15

The session duration in Outlook Web Access might be enforced on the organization policy level, and OWA has no way to tweak it for individual users.

If so, one can either convince whoever took this decision, or install a browser extension to automatically refresh the session.

For example, mSession Keeper for Firefox can be set up to:

Disclaimer: while I cannot see anything bad happening to users because of this tweak, I cannot guarantee that you're not violating some of your company policies.

Edit: to answer a request, I googled up a way to configure the timeout if you have an OWA administrator role. Did not test it myself, though.

(The default is) 6 hours. You can change this value by using the ActivityBasedAuthenticationTimeoutInterval parameter in the Set-OrganizationConfig cmdlet.

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7
5

For Chrome you could use the plugin Staying alive for Google Chrome which makes requests in the background to Outlook Web Mail. You can configure the URL triggers which will start with the background requests.

This prevents you from logging out.

However like Victor Sergienko is explaining, this could be against your company policies. In my case my alternative was using Outlook on Windows, but for Linux users this is no option. Also using the Evolution client on Linux didn't work seamless because of some connection issues.

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2

This has been an issue for me as well. Being at work and constantly being signed out of O365 is horrible. I have a small work around that helped me though When you need dumb luck try this It is super simple and was done by accident and may not work for everyone. I have been opening O365 in Chrome. I just opened 2 of my Outlook tabs and for some reason it kept me logged in. As of yesterday I have been using Mozilla Firefox and it has not signed me out a single time. Hope this helps.

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  • 4
    It seems like you give two unrelated suggestions: 1) Open 2 tabs in Chrome 2) Use FireFox. Can you edit your answer to be more specific? And please remove all the opinions, just an answer will do.
    – user55949
    Commented Jun 6, 2019 at 9:46
  • I tried it. Does not work for me.
    – Ethan Leroy
    Commented Jan 12 at 6:49
1

StayingAlive for chrome was not working for me on outlook.office.com :(

This greasemonkey script reloads the page just short of every 5 minutes: https://openuserjs.org/scripts/devinrhode2/reload_outlook_every_9_minutes

(You need to install tampermonkey for chrome, or another user script extension for other extensions)

It's on github as https://github.com/devinrhode2/StayLoggedIn.js

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4
  • I will have to check this out since none of the other solutions seem to work in 2023 at least for one of my office365 accounts. I have 2 different accounts because my employer is a university and a hospital system.
    – drescherjm
    Commented Apr 18, 2023 at 21:17
  • The script might not be working anymore today, I maybe used it for a few months and then I got a better job I think. If you can make note of new errors that happen after installing this, just create an issue on github with your findings. If you can provide sufficient detail I MAY be able to write a fix.
    – Devin Rhode
    Commented Apr 19, 2023 at 12:57
  • Thanks. It signed out overnight but I had the computer sleeping. I will have to try to test again tomorrow. Today I will be in the office.
    – drescherjm
    Commented Apr 19, 2023 at 13:38
  • Yeah if computer is asleep then this script won't be able to run to keep you logged in.
    – Devin Rhode
    Commented Apr 19, 2023 at 21:48

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