The long overdue IMAP support for Outlook.com has finally arrived and it allows email clients such the one from Mac and Thunderbird, and phones without Exchange ActiveSync (EAS) email connectivity support to sync with Outlook.com services.
For those unfamiliar, IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol) is an older protocol that let cloud services and software to talk email servers (in this case Microsoft Outlook) and sync any activity in your inbox across devices. But it’s not as advanced as EAS, which works almost in “real time”, doesn’t consume much battery on mobile devices, and is network efficient — Microsoft recommends to use it whenever possible.
Now let’s just get one thing out-of-the-way, if you’re using a smartphone or tablet, including Android, iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Windows Phone, or Windows 8 Mail and Outlook 2013, you don’t need to worry about configuring this protocol. This is just for apps, devices, or services that still depend on a less sophisticated protocol.
Connecting to Outlook.com with IMAP
Basically when you need to sync and IMAP settings are required, you’ll need to use these 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
Source Outlook Blog
