Hotmail Server Settings (Outlook.com)

You can always login to your Hotmail account from a web browser, but the mail server settings let you to check your messages from an email program as well. As one of the largest webmail providers in the world, Outlook.com is supported "out of the box" in many cases; behind-the-scenes, your mail app may automatically use "Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync" (EAS), instead of IMAP or POP. (In Windows Live Mail, the automatic configuration is called "HTTP settings".) The settings you manually configure are exactly the same, regardless of the domain of your email address (how the address ends: @hotmail.com, @msn.com, @outlook.com, etc. - these are all Microsoft email accounts!) We'll show you how to enable POP3, and an awesome option that guarantees that your emails won't be accidentally deleted if you forget to turn on the "Leave messages on server" option in your email program!

Quick Steps to manually setup your Outlook.com account:

1 Your username is your full Hotmail / Outlook.com email address.
2 Your email password is your Microsoft account password.
3 Incoming POP server is pop-mail.outlook.com (port 995 with SSL).
4 Incoming IMAP server is imap-mail.outlook.com (port 993 with SSL).
5 Outgoing SMTP server is smtp-mail.outlook.com (port 587 with SSL).

Which protocol should I use?

Email account setup with multiple protocols and providers If your email app supports Hotmail / Outlook.com as one of the default presets you can use when you setup an email account, it will likely use Microsoft ActiveSync - keep that approach (the screenshot shows the default, supported email accounts in iOS). If you want to manually add your email account, POP3 works if you only care about messages delivered to your inbox (caveat: if you use mail filters to automatically move messages to other folders, these emails won't be visible when you connect with POP). But IMAP will let you access your inbox and any other folder in your account, which is why it can take a bit longer to load messages (since it's looking at all your folders, not just the inbox!)

Tip: with POP3, you won't be able to see messages that Outlook.com has filtered as junk mail, but know that you can customize your spam settings to filter as much or as little as you want!

Incoming server settings - IMAP

Use the following IMAP settings for your email program:

Use "imap-mail.outlook.com" as incoming mail server.
Use 993 as incoming port.
Choose the secure connection setting (SSL / TLS) - this ensures that your credentials are sent encrypted (scrambled) between your app and Microsoft's mail servers.
The username and password are your full Microsoft email address, and account password.

Your outgoing server settings are the same for IMAP and POP3.

Note: while your incoming and outgoing servers end in "outlook.com", they work with any Microsoft email domain (like hotmail.ca, hotmail.co.uk, hotmail.co.nz, hotmail.co.jp, etc.)

Incoming server settings - POP3

Configure Hotmail / Outlook.com account settings Before you can use POP3, you'll need to enable that feature in your Hotmail account. Sign in to your email account and click on the gear icon (top right corner). Select "Options" from the dropdown, and click on the "Connect devices and apps with POP" link in the next page (sixth link under the first section). Enable POP3 in your Hotmail account

Under "POP", select Enable and click Save. Your Outlook.com account is now ready to retrieve emails through POP3; here are the settings you'll need to setup:

The incoming POP3 server address is "pop-mail.outlook.com".
Use 995 as incoming port.
Use the secure connection option in your email client (SSL / TLS).
Your username and password are your full Hotmail address and account password.

Your outgoing server settings are the same for POP3 and IMAP!

Configure your "Leave messages on server" setting

By default, most desktop email clients will delete messages from the server once they've been downloaded. You can manually turn on the "Leave messages on server" setting (through your program's account properties), but Microsoft smartly includes a server-side setting that will prevent email apps from deleting emails! (The option becomes visible once you enable POP.) Prevent email programs from deleting downloaded POP messages

Allow your email program to delete downloaded messages We recommend that you leave the "Don't let devices or apps delete messages from Outlook.com. If the app or device is set to delete, Outlook.com will move the messages to a special POP folder instead" selected. Under that scenario, you'll see a new "Deleted items" folder automatically created - you can move these messages to Hotmail's "Deleted" folder, from where they are automatically deleted. Pick "Do what the device or app says - if it's set to delete messages, delete them" instead if you prefer to keep control over message deletion on your end (if that's the case, make sure to regularly backup your emails!)

Important: if downloaded messages are automatically deleted, they won't be there when you login to Hotmail from a web browser, or when you sign in using another email program!

Outgoing server settings (SMTP) for Hotmail / Outlook.com

The Hotmail / Outlook.com SMTP settings are exactly the same whether you use POP or IMAP: they are used whenever your email program / mobile app sends messages using your account.

The username is your full email address.
The password is your Microsoft account password.
The outgoing server address is "smtp-mail.outlook.com".
The outgoing server port is 25. Because of abuse by spammers, many internet service providers (ISP) block outgoing port 25, so Microsoft also supports port 587.
Outgoing authentication (supplying your credentials whenever you send messages) should be enabled - without that, anyone could send emails using your email address!
Encrypted (secure) connection must be turned on (SSL / TLS).

Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync settings (EAS)

Use Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync with Outlook.com On mail clients and devices that support ActiveSync, enter "s.outlook.com" as server address, and leave the domain empty. Enter your username (full email address), and your account password - you are good to go! (Just make sure that SSL / TLS is enabled - this option encrypts the now secure connection between the Outlook.com mail servers and your device / app.)