A bug in Outlook 2016 is making it harder for German users to get their email.

If users include the two-dot umlaut in their email password, the system won't authenticate them and their IMAP account will refuse access.

Microsoft has warned that the issue could result if any Unicode character is used, but it cites three examples that point to a distinctly anti-German bias: ä, ö and ü.

Amazingly, there isn't a fix for the issue yet, despite Unicode being nearly 30 years old and most software companies having figured out how to deal with non-English characters many years ago.

In fact, Microsoft itself had worked out how to deal with umlauts three years ago and one of the pieces of advice it offers to its Deutsche downloaders is to revert to Outlook 2013.

The other pieces of helpful advice that it provides to people using German words as passwords to access IMAP accounts? Use a different password, or use a different protocol.

Thanks Microsoft. Or as our German friends would say: Küss meinen Arsch (which means exactly what you think it does). ®