The Outlook.com team is doing another Reddit ‘Ask me anything’ (AMA) and one of the top questions was regarding IMAP support. In a clever announcement, the team notified the person asking the question that Outlook now supports the popular email protocol and even provided the settings.
Many potential customers have wanted to switch to Outlook.com from the likes of Gmail and other services, but the lack of IMAP support was hindering their transition. This was especially true for those who used Mac Mail and Thunderbird on a Mac.
In the previous AMA, the team noted that IMAP was being worked on but they had nothing firm to announce. Just a few months later and it is clear that IMAP became a priority as it is now live for customers in addition to new partnerships to hook into the popular email service from Microsoft.
Settings for IMAP are listed below for Outlook.com
- Incoming IMAP mail server: imap-mail.outlook.com
- Incoming IMAP mail server port: 993
- Encryption: SSL
SMTP
- Outgoing SMTP mail server: smtp-mail.outlook.com
- Outgoing SMTP mail server port: 587
- Encryption: TLS
In addition, support for OAuth has also been announced, meaning third-party apps and services can now hook into Outlook.com. In fact, Microsoft and the Outlook.com team are announcing partnerships with TripIt, Sift, Slice, motley*bunch, Unroll.me, OtherInbox, and Context.IO to work with the email service directly. Users will be able to plugin and get a more unified experience using the various services. More information can be found on the Outlook Blog.
Source: Outlook Blog, Reddit
