Outlook Error Message Unable To Connect Right Now

The Problem

A client of mine was receiving the below error every time they tried to either activate Outlook or connect Outlook to their Exchange Online account:

We are unable to connect right now. Please check your network and try again later.

How I Fixed it

After trying all the “usual suspects” - Office Update, Windows Update, Online Repair of Office, disabling their software VPN etc. - none of which made any difference, I did a fair amount of Googling, and happened across a helpful solution, as below:

1. Open Network & Sharing Centre
   1. You should see that the network description shows “Unknown” and reports “The service to detect this status is disabled”.
2. Set the startup type of the Network List service to Automatic and start it.
   1. This might fail, stating that a dependency is not running - if that’s the case, set to Automatic startup type (if necessary) and start the Network Location Awareness service, and try the above again.

It would appear that in this case there was a pretty decent clue in the error message itself…

The PowerShell way…

Set-Service -ServiceName NlaSvc -StartupType Automatic
Set-Service -ServiceName netprofm -StartupType Automatic
Start-Service -ServiceName NlaSvc,netprofm