Outlook.com now has IMAP


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Outlook.com now has IMAP

As we shared on Reddit, we're happy to announce the immediate availability of IMAP (and OAuth) for Outlook.com. Outlook.com already supports the industry's best email connectivity with Exchange ActiveSync (EAS), which is available on the majority of smartphones and tablets, including Windows Phone, iOS, and Android devices, as well as the Windows 8 Mail app and Outlook 2013. With today's announcement, we now have a richer email experience across devices and apps, including those not using EAS, such as Mac Mail and Thunderbird on a Mac.

Why IMAP?

While we believe that EAS is the most robust protocol for connecting to your email, with syncing in near real time, and superior battery and network efficiency, there are still some devices and apps that haven't made the upgrade to EAS. As an older protocol, IMAP is widely supported on feature phones and other email clients such as those on a Mac. We heard your feedback loud and clear that this was important.

In addition to offering more complete device connectivity, IMAP (along with OAuth) gives developers opportunities to build third-party clients and services that offer value-added scenarios on top of your Outlook.com email. We are excited to launch the first set of services today that integrate with Outlook.com, and look forward to sharing many more in the future.


Source and full article: Outlook Blog

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Finally! I can't be happier with the decision to support IMAP (and OAuth), now you can use the email client you want to with the protocol you want to.

 

It's a shame EAS specs are not free, I'd love to see a simple email client (a la Outlook Express) for the desktop or even cross-platform that implements that protocol. Anyway, IMAP is my next choice when EAS is not possible.

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Details from the Reddit AMA for those who are interested, where this news was launched!

 


Hey, this is Steve from the Outlook.com team.

It wouldn't be an AMA session without an IMAP question :) I?m excited to announce that starting right now we DO support IMAP, and we wanted you folks to be the first to know. Go check it out.

IMAP

o Incoming IMAP mail server: imap-mail.outlook.com

o Incoming IMAP mail server port: 993

o Encryption: SSL

SMTP

o Outgoing SMTP mail server: smtp-mail.outlook.com

o Outgoing SMTP mail server port: 587

o Encryption: TLS

We?re also supporting OAuth so that all sorts of 3rd party apps and services can easily and safely integrate with Outlook.com. We?ll have a blog post up soon with more details, including a description of some partners who are launching support today: TripIt, Sift, Slice, motley*bunch, Unroll.me, OtherInbox, and Context.IO.

And remember, you heard it here first!

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And IMAP is better than POP3, yet Outlook.com supported POP3 from the start.

They had POP3 back from the Hotmail days. I meant it is good that they prioritized EAS over IMAP.
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They had POP3 back from the Hotmail days. I meant it is good that they prioritized EAS over IMAP.

Well, EAS is a proprietary Microsoft standard so I'm not surprised it was prioritised.

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it's also superior in every way

Superior is a relative term. IMAP does everything I need and is more widely supported. Clearly people wanted IMAP support; this was just a classic case of Microsoft trying to tell users what they should use.

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it's also superior in every way

yes it's superior in every way but there are many products that don't support EAS (such as macs and non MS Outlook programs). and using POP3 is just a bad experience all around compared to either EAS or IMAP

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