Basic Authentication Access for Office 365 and Google Workspace Email accounts

Overview

Both Microsoft and Google are improving security for users by disabling older and less secure methods of authentication (‘Basic Authentication’ and ‘Less Secure Access’ respectively) for their cloud offerings.

If you are using Microsoft Exchange Online or Google Workspace with Basic Authentication for email notifications, Scan to Email or Email to Print in PaperCut NG/MF, you will be impacted by upcoming changes. PaperCut Hive and PaperCut Pocket are not impacted.

Timeline of changes

Microsoft Exchange Online

As of January 2026: Microsoft has announced the end of support timeline for Exchange Online basic authentication with Client Submission (SMTP AUTH). They will “gradually begin with a small percentage of submission rejections for all tenants” starting March 1st, 2026. Complete deprecation of basic authentication is targeted for April 30th, 2026.

See the table below listing fix information for notifications, Scan to Email and Email to Print.

GoogleWorkspace

The original announcement from Google is here: Turning off less secure app access to G Suite (now Workspace) accounts.

Google officially announced end of support for less secure apps on April 29th 2025, taking effect on May 1, 2025. See their official update on the Google Workspace Updates page.

See the table below listing fix information for notifications, Scan to Email and Email to Print.

Impacts to PaperCut NG/MF

Resolution for Email Notifications and Scan to Email

If you are currently using email with Basic Authentication in PaperCut NG/MF for System Notifications or Scan to Email we recommend:

• With PaperCut NG/MF version 22.1.2 or later, you’ll be able to use the new Gmail with OAuth or Outlook with OAuth options, under Options > Notifications > SMTP Server Options in the PaperCut NG/MF admin interface.
  • See Configure an SMTP server for Office 365 or Microsoft 365 using OAuth2 or Configure an SMTP server for Google using OAuth2 for more information.
• With PaperCut NG/MF version 22.1.1 or earlier, you’ll need to use an SMTP relay with Google Workspace or Office 365.
  • See the next section SMTP relay set up (if you’re using version 22.1.1 or earlier) for more information.

SMTP relay set up (if you’re using version 22.1.1 or earlier)

Microsoft

This is the recommended practice for setting up 3rd party apps (i.e. PaperCut) with these platforms, which will also allow you to disable basic auth (or not have to enable basic auth if you’re a new customer).

1. Follow Option 3 of Microsoft’s guide: How to set up a multifunction device or application to send email using Microsoft 365 or Office 365.
2. For the PaperCut-specific steps and configuration, refer to the Setting up a Microsoft / Office 365 SMTP Relay with PaperCut manual page.

Google

This is the recommended practice for setting up 3rd party apps (i.e. PaperCut) with these platforms, which will also allow you to disable basic auth (or not have to enable basic auth if you’re a new customer).

1. Follow Google’s guide: SMTP relay: Route outgoing non-Gmail messages through Google .
2. For the PaperCut-specific steps and configuration, refer to the Setting up a Google Workspace SMTP Relay with PaperCut manual page.

Email limits

Note that depending on your subscription with Microsoft or Google, there may be limits applied to the number of emails that can be sent through the relay (see Google and Microsoft documentation on sending limits for the relay services). Normally this is 10,000 per day - so should not be an issue, but it’s worth keeping in mind for larger or busier sites!

Resolution for Email to Print

If you are using the Email to Print feature, see below for the resolutions:

Microsoft

• For Microsoft / Office 365 customers - the ability to use MS Office 365 with Email to Print (without basic auth) is available in PaperCut NG/MF version 22.0.0 and later. This is done by selecting the new IMAP OAUTH for Microsoft 365, Office 365, Outlook.com protocol from the drop down box when configuring Email to Print (see point 5 under the ‘Setting up a mailbox’ section of the Email to Print manual page).

Google

• For Google / Workspace customers - the ability to use Gmail / Google Workspace with Email to Print (without basic auth) is available in PaperCut NG/MF version 22.0.3 and later. This is done by selecting the new Gmail OAuth2 protocol from the drop down box when configuring email to print. For more information on configuring Email to Print with Google mail see Setting Up Google OAuth2 for your Gmail account for Email to Print.

Note: As an alternative for Mobile printing, you can also check out our Mobility Print product which lets you print from macOS, Windows, Android, iOS and Chromebooks.