Life pro tip that will make your IT deparment hate you: you can use Evolution and change the client id to match outlook’s one in the advanced settings. It’ll look like you are using the standard outlook client from your IT department point of view, but you’ll actually get a usable interface instead. I assume that thunderbird has the same options to override the client id, but I haven’t checked.
Don’t blame me if you get in troubles though.
https://downloadmoreram.com/ for those who miss the reference (and btw, it’s safe to click the download button, it doesn’t do anything, it’s just a good old school joke website)