Outlook.com and Hotmail

For addresses at outlook.com, hotmail.com, live.com, and msn.com, and every other mailbox Microsoft runs as Outlook.com. Two things are different from other mail accounts: you sign in on Microsoft's page instead of typing a password, and IMAP has to be switched on once at outlook.com.

1. Add the account

In Postfach, choose Add Account and type your address. The setup sheet recognises an Outlook.com address and switches to Outlook; select Sign In with Microsoft. Microsoft's page opens: sign in there, allow Postfach access when Microsoft asks, and you are back in Postfach. Postfach never sees your password and keeps only a sign-in token in your Keychain.

Outlook.com has taken no password from mail apps since 16 September 2024, so there is no other way in, and an app password does not help either. If your own domain is hosted at Outlook.com, choose Outlook in the setup sheet yourself.

2. Switch on IMAP at outlook.com

Outlook.com keeps IMAP off until you turn it on, and without it no mail app but Microsoft's own can open the mailbox. Postfach then tells you that Microsoft signed you in but its mail server did not open the mailbox.

1. Sign in at outlook.com in a browser.
2. Select the gear at the top right to open the settings.

3. Choose Mail, then Forwarding and IMAP. In some languages of Outlook the first is called Email.
4. Under POP and IMAP, switch on Let devices and apps use IMAP, and select Save.

5. Back in Postfach, select Test Connection in the account's settings, or wait for the next check.

After the switch it can take a while before the mailbox opens, in our experience up to a few hours. If it still does not open the next day, switch the setting off and on again at outlook.com.

3. If it still does not connect

Microsoft sometimes holds back a sign-in from a new app until you confirm it was you. Go to account.live.com/activity, sign in with the same account, find the sign-in from the time Postfach tried, and select This was me. Then try again in Postfach.

Check too that Postfach's account is the one Microsoft signed you in as: when they differ, Postfach names the account Microsoft signed in, and a browser that was already signed in to another Microsoft account uses that one.

4. Receiving works, sending does not

Some newer Outlook.com mailboxes can receive mail in any app but send only from Microsoft's own. Postfach then keeps the message in the Outbox, with Microsoft's answer: 5.7.139 SmtpClientAuthentication is disabled for the Mailbox.

This is a setting on Microsoft's side, and a personal account has no switch for it: the page that answer points to is for company accounts, whose administrators can change it. Microsoft has not said whether or when it is lifted for new mailboxes. Postfach keeps the message; Send Again in the Outbox sends it once Microsoft allows it. Until then, send from outlook.com.

The settings, for reference

Postfach fills these in by itself.

Microsoft's own pages: POP, IMAP, and SMTP settings for Outlook.com and Modern authentication for non-Microsoft email apps.

Still stuck? Write to us, and say what Postfach showed.