How To Use The New IMAP Support In Outlook

It has been over a year since Microsoft introduced and combined all of their email services to the new revamped modern Windows 8 styled Outlook.com and its time for the email service to support IMAP. One of the greatest features of the IMAP protocol is that it allows the standalone computers to access and make changes to the emails stored in a remote server easily. This means that every change you make in the local inbox of your computer will be affected through all devices as the changes are also made in the server.

Until now, Microsoft was solely relying on their own Exchange ActiveSync technology for making the above-mentioned process viable. However, some of the email clients, mostly those running on Mac operating system did not have support for EAS technology so they were not able to easily access their Outlook.com emails. Well with the introduction of the IMAP technology to the email server, everyone will be able to access and make changes to the inbox easily. However, for using IMAP on the Outlook email service, you need to follow some Outlook setting instructions like setting incoming and Outgoing server settings.

Incoming IMAP

• Server: imap-mail.outlook.com 
• Server port: 993 
• Encryption: SSL 

Outgoing SMTP

• Server: smtp-mail.outlook.com 
• Server port: 587 
• Encryption: TLS 

There is good news for Outlook.com email users as Microsoft also has decided to include support for OAuth authentication standard for their email service. This move will make it easy for users to make use of third party applications for accessing your email more securely and easily. Most of the third party application services like TripIt have released more enhanced Outlook integration features. The app will be able to detect travel confirmations and add them to your schedule easily. According to Outlook setting website, some of the other third party software companies that rolled out new versions of Outlook.com integration are Slice, Sift, motley*bunch, and context.io. Unroll.me and OtherInbox are applications that allow the users to keep their inbox clean.

This new technological support that Microsoft provides for Outlook.com is mainly done to increase their stand in the online email arena, in addition to matching up to the services and features of Gmail from Google. With the support for the Skype application through Outlook, IMAP support, OAuth support and alias sign-ins, Outlook.com from Microsoft is now a far better email client than the other options available today.