One of the drawbacks of Microsoft’s Hotmail replacement Outlook.com was that if you wanted to use something other than its web interface, email clients could only access messages using POP3 or Microsoft’s EAS protocol. A lot more devices and services use IMAP, and now so does Outlook.com.
This means you can access your Outlook.com in, say, Thunderbird using IMAP, which offers a few key advantages, such as syncing sent items and other folder changes.
In addition, it means third-party apps such as TripIt, OtherInbox and Slice can connect to your Outlook.com email to enable features such as tracking your travel itineraries, keeping your inbox organised, and gathering all your receipts.
Along with the introduction of IMAP, Microsoft has also made the authorisation for both IMAP and SMTP to OAuth 2.0. That means apps and services that connect to Outlook.com may be more secure, since they require your authorisation.
Check out the changes and the settings for IMAP in Microsoft’s Outlook Blog.
Oulook.com now has IMAP [Outlook Blog]
Comments
2 responses to “Outlook.com Now Supports IMAP”
That’s weird: I’ve been using IMAP since my university switched to outlook mail for students over a year ago (mostly because Exchange didn’t work properly on the clients I was using).
That might have been the old Hotmal/Live IMAP servers, which technically are now rebadged Outlook servers.
This appears to be new functionality for the Outlook.com servers, not the legacy ones.
Hmm… I don’t think Hotmail/Outlook.com has ever had IMAP support until today.
I think what @thimone is referring to is that some universities use Microsoft Exchange servers for their email, and as far as I’m aware, the vast majority of them allow access via IMAP (you can allow or disallow access via IMAP and POP on the Exchange server).
Basically, IMAP for Exchange has been around longer than IMAP for Hotmail/Outlook.com.