Send and receive email from other accounts in Outlook.com

If you have multiple email accounts, you can use Outlook.com to send and receive email from Google, Yahoo! Mail Plus, or other services that use POP (Post Office Protocol). If you previously had multiple Microsoft accounts linked to each other, you can set them all to send and receive email from one place.

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Send and receive email from multiple Microsoft accounts in one place

Here’s what you’ll need do to set up all your Microsoft accounts to work together. If you previously had linked accounts together, this will make managing email from multiple accounts even easier.

  • Choose a main account and set your other accounts to automatically forward email to that account.

  • Set your main account to send email from your other account(s).

  • If you want, set rules in your main account to sort incoming email into folders.

Set your other accounts to automatically forward email to your main account

  1. Choose which account will be your main account, and then sign in to your other account.

  2. Click the Options icon Options icon, and then click More mail settings.
  3. Click Email forwarding.

  4. Select Forward your mail to another email account.

  5. Enter the email address for the main account.

  6. If you want, select Keep a copy of forwarded messages in your Outlook inbox, and then click Save.

  7. Sign in to any other account you want to forward and repeat steps 2-6.

Note

Note

  • You need to sign in to your forwarded account at least once every 365 days, otherwise the system will close the account.

Set your main account to send email from your other accounts

  1. Sign in to your main account.

  2. Click the Options icon Options icon, and then click More mail settings.
  3. Click Your email accounts.

  4. Click Add a send-only account, enter the email address and password for your other account, and then click Next.

  5. If you want to add another account, click go to Options and repeat step 4.

  6. Look for a verification email that was forwarded from the other account. Click the link in the email to verify that you own the account.

    If you haven't set up auto-forwarding yet, the verification email will be in your other account.

  7. Repeat step 6 for any other accounts you added in step 4.

Set rules in your main account to sort incoming email into folders

  1. Sign in to your main account.

  2. Click the Options icon Options icon, then click More mail settings.
  3. Click Rules for sorting new messages, and then click New.

  4. In Step 1, select To or Cc line, and enter the email address of your other account.

  5. In Step 2, choose an existing folder, a new folder, or some other action, and then click Save.

  6. Repeat steps 4 and 5 for an additional accounts.

Add a Gmail account to Outlook.com

The best way to add a Gmail account is to forward the account to Outlook.com, set up Outlook.com to send email using your Gmail address, then import your contacts and old email. Here's how:

Set Gmail to forward email to Outlook.com

  1. Sign in to your Outlook.com and Gmail accounts and stay signed in to both until you're done with the setup.

  2. In your Gmail account, click Settings.

  3. Click Forwarding and POP/IMAP, then click Add a forwarding address.

  4. Enter your Outlook.com email address, click Next, click Proceed, and then click OK.

  5. In Outlook.com, open the confirmation email from Gmail and click the link to verify.

  6. In Gmail, refresh the settings page by pressing the F5 key.

  7. Select Forward a copy of incoming mail to, and then click Save Changes.

Set up Outlook.com to send mail from your Gmail address

  1. In Outlook.com, click the Options icon Options icon, then click More mail settings.
  2. Under Managing your account, click Your email accounts.

  3. Under Add an email account, click Add a send-only account.

  4. Enter your Gmail address and password, and then click Next.

Import your Gmail contacts into Outlook.com

  1. In Outlook.com, go to the People page.

  2. Click Google contacts, and then click Connect.

  3. Click Allow access, then click Done.

Move your old email over using TrueSwitch for Outlook.com

TrueSwitch is a free service that helps you move your messages over to Outlook.com.

  1. Go to TrueSwitch.

    • Enter your Gmail address and password.

    • Enter your Outlook.com address and password.

    • Select Copy your email messages and clear all the other checkboxes.

  2. Click Copy to Outlook.com or Hotmail.

Note

Note

  • It can take up to 24 hours for TrueSwitch to copy all of your old email. You can find it in a new folder called GMAIL_Mail.

Add a Yahoo! Mail Plus or other POP account to Outlook.com

Free Yahoo! email accounts can't be added as a POP account. You need to have a Yahoo! Mail Plus account.

  1. In Outlook.com, click the Options icon Options icon, then click More mail settings.
  2. Under Managing your account, click Your email accounts.

  3. Under Add an email account, click Add a send-and-receive account.

  4. Enter the email address and password of the email account that you want to add to Outlook.com, and then click Next.

    Outlook.com provides the recommended settings. If you're prompted to verify the settings, or if Outlook.com can't connect to the other mail server, contact your email provider to verify that the POP and SMTP settings are correct.

  5. Select the location—another folder or your Outlook.com inbox—where you want mail from this account to go.

  6. Select the option you want for your unread messages, and then click Save.

Notes

Notes

  • Outlook.com automatically checks your other account for new messages every 30 minutes, and can receive up to 50 messages at a time. The remaining messages will be included in the next automatic refresh.

  • The maximum size of an email message, including attachments, is 25 MB.

  • You can add up to 10 POP accounts to your Outlook.com account.

Forward email from non-POP accounts to Outlook.com

Some email providers allow you to forward email to your Outlook.com account. For more info on how to do this, see your email provider's Help section.

Automatically sort forwarded email into Outlook.com folders

You can set Outlook.com to sort incoming mail from different accounts into different folders. Here's how:

  1. In Outlook.com, create a new folder, if necessary.

    To add a folder, right-click Folders, click Add a new folder, and enter a folder name.

  2. Click the Options icon Options icon, then click More mail settings.
  3. Under Customizing Outlook, click Rules for sorting new messages.

  4. Click New.

  5. Under Step 1:

    • In the first list, select To or Cc line.

    • In the second list, select contains.

    • In the text box, enter the address for the email you want to sort.

  6. Under Step 2, select Move to a new folder, and the select the folder that you want to sort the messages into.

  7. Click Save.

Note

Note

  • Messages sent to a mailing list won't be added to this folder.

Note

Note

  • The Mail app in Windows 8 and Windows RT doesn’t support POP accounts. If you're currently using an app like Outlook Express or Windows Live Mail, we recommend that you use the Mail Migration add-on to move your email and contacts over from your old app to your Outlook.com account. You can then add your new Outlook.com account to the Mail app.

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