Microsoft starts switching off old Exchange email connections in October
Reviewed by Helen Jones
Microsoft will begin turning off Exchange Web Services (EWS) in Exchange Online in October 2026. EWS is the older way some apps talk to mailboxes. Full disablement is set for April 2027. Microsoft Learn, last updated 4 September 2026, still lists gaps in Microsoft Graph, the newer replacement. Some Graph features are only expected later in 2026. A few EWS jobs, including some public folder and group mailbox work, will not get Graph equivalents. Microsoft also points teams toward Power Platform as a low-code way to rebuild mailbox processes. It has usage reports and mapping guides for organisations that still rely on EWS.
Until now, many mailbox tools could keep using EWS even after Microsoft stopped adding features to it. That old path sat behind some custom apps, third-party mailbox tools, and a handful of email automations that never moved to Graph. Standard Power Automate Outlook, Teams, and SharePoint cloud flows usually sit on newer connectors, so a working approval or notification flow was not automatically an EWS problem. What changed is the calendar. From October, tenants can start losing EWS access even if a flow still looks healthy in run history. The failure will not look like a bad expression. It will look like a mailbox action that suddenly cannot reach Exchange. If a process still depends on an old mailbox app, a custom connector, or a vendor that never left EWS, October is the start of breakage, not a distant IT project.
Analysis
Treat this as a check, not a rebuild of every Outlook flow. Ask IT or search your vendor list for any mailbox tool still using EWS, then leave standard Outlook connectors alone unless that check finds a hit.
Source note
Pulse published by Collab365 Spaces, reviewed by Helen Jones on . Cite as "Microsoft starts switching off old Exchange email connections in October", Collab365 Spaces. 2 sources referenced.