ag91 / m365-imap

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Using OfflineIMAP with M365

This instruction describes how OfflineIMAP can be used with an IMAP-enabled Exchange Online (M365) environment using OAuth2, see the OfflineIMAP config documentation. Note that the Microsoft 365 instance (the tenant) must be configured to support IMAP over 'modern authentication' and that it requires app consent to be granted for a mail app for which you have the client ID and secret.

A variation of the below should work with any OAuth-enabled mail client or script.

Step 1: get a client ID/secret

In order to connect to Azure AD for authentication, you need a client ID and secret (an "app registration" in AAD). Confusingly, the client secret doesn't actually need to be a secret (a client app like a mail client can't keep secrets, after all). You can your own app registration, or use an existing one such as Thunderbird's, which is publicly available (see the login.microsoft.com section). Whatever client ID you use, it will need to have been granted the IMAP.AccessAsUser.All permission in your M365 tenant.

Step 2: get a token

Since OfflineIMAP doesn't support an interactive flow for getting a token, you need to do this step yourself. You can use get_token.py for this purpose, which uses Microsoft's MSAL wrapper library to perform the OAuth2 flow:

git clone https://github.com/UvA-FNWI/M365-IMAP
cd M365-IMAP
pip install msal
# add the client ID and secret from step 1 to config.py 
python3 get_token.py

Follow the instructions to obtain a refresh_token file containing an AAD refresh token. Note that the token allows access to your full mailbox (in combination with the client 'secret') and hence should be stored securely.

Step 3: configure OfflineIMAP

Edit your .offlineimaprc file so that your remote repository section looks like this:

[Repository Remote]
type = IMAP
sslcacertfile = <path to CA certificates>
remotehost = outlook.office365.com 
remoteuser = <your M365 email address>
auth_mechanisms = XOAUTH2
oauth2_request_url = https://login.microsoftonline.com/common/oauth2/v2.0/token
oauth2_client_id = <the client ID from step 1>
oauth2_client_secret = <the client secret from step 1>
oauth2_refresh_token = <the contents of the refresh_token file from step 2>

Note: in practice you should store your token in some type of secure key store.

Optionally you may want to include

folderfilter = lambda folder: not folder.startswith('Calendar') and not folder.startswith('Contacts')

to filter out folders containing non-mail items.

Sending Mail

Sending mail with a program like msmtp using SMTP requires an access token. The access token has a short life and has to be refreshed periodically using the refresh token.

refresh_token.py takes the refresh token stored in the file named in config.RefreshTokenFileName and uses the MSAL library to request a new access token. The new access token comes with a new refresh token and this is stored in config.RefreshTokenFileName as well.

Optionally, refresh_token.py also prints the access token, so it can easily be used in password scripts that work with your sendmail program. For example, the sendmail configuration in msmtprc would read:

account myaccount
host    smtp.office365.com
port    587
auth    xoauth2
tls     on
tls_starttls on
from    <user@domain>
user    <user@domain>
passwordeval "cd /usr/local/src/M365-IMAP/; python3 refresh_token.py"