Your life, connected

Windows 8, Windows RT

	Microsoft account
	Files & folders
	Friends & photos

Connect to Facebook, email, and photo accounts

Connect to online photos, Facebook, and other accounts

Your friends, contacts, email, and photos from all different web services come together in Windows 8 and Windows RT. Connect your accounts from Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, Outlook.com, Google, and more to your Microsoft account, and your photos, files, email, and contact info from those accounts are combined for you in apps like Photos, People, Calendar, and Mail.

For example, say you've posted a photo on Flickr, and now you want to share it with a Facebook friend. If you’ve already connected your Flickr and Facebook accounts, then you can quickly find the photo and share it, without signing in to multiple websites. Your apps work together, so when you share from the Photos app, you choose who to share it with from your unified contact list in the People app.

Add contacts to the People app

If you signed in to Windows with an email address you already use, then the first time you open People, you'll see your contacts. If you don't see any, it might be because you set up a brand new email address as your Microsoft account. You can add contacts one at a time, but a much easier way is to connect your email and social networking accounts to your Microsoft account. This instantly adds your contacts for you. Here's how:

In the People app, open the Settings charm, and choose Accounts.
Select the account you want to add, and follow the instructions to connect it.

You'll be asked to sign in with your account password, and you'll see exactly what info is going to be shared between Microsoft and the account that you're adding. Wait a few minutes, and your contacts from the new account will start appearing in the People app. Depending on the type of account you've added, you might also see their profile photos, status updates, and other info too.

Mail and Calendar

You can add accounts to the Mail and Calendar apps in the same way—just open the Settings charm from within the app, choose Accounts, and follow the instructions. Because your apps work together, any contacts from the accounts you add to these apps will appear in the People app, too.

Note

Google has indicated that as of January 30, 2013, it intends to stop support for new EAS (Exchange ActiveSync) connections in some scenarios. This means the services you can sync with your PC might change. For more info, see How to sync Google services with Windows.