Many people use Microsoft Outlook to manage their emails. It allows users to send and receive emails without the need to open a web-browser or logging into some kind of Webmail. In this tutorial, I will teach you how to set up email on Microsoft Outlook.
In this particular tutorial, I will use an example of an email account created on cPanel, however, similar steps apply to all other email services also.
What you’ll need
Before you begin this guide you’ll need the following:
- Outlook installed on your computer.
- An active email account in your external email provider.
- POP3/IMAP and SMTP details from your email service provider.
Step 1 — Collecting POP3/IMAP and SMTP Details.
In this article, I will be teaching two ways you can get your POP3/IMAP and SMTP Details. So the first way is for our customers and the second way is for those who we did not build and host their website for them. so stick around as I show you how to get it set up.
First of all, from your current email service provider, you will need to get POP3/IMAP and SMTP details of the email account you wish to configure on Microsoft Outlook. But if you are our customer we got you covered, simply contact us and we will give you all the necessary POP3/IMAP and SMTP details of the email account you wish to configure on Microsoft Outlook and make your life easy. so when you received POP3/IMAP and SMTP details of the email account from us, you can skip down to step 2 of this tutorial. For our non-customer, you can start from step 1 and follow along as I walk you through this tutorial. Below steps shows you how to collect POP3/IMAP and SMTP details with cPanel.
Collecting Details on cPanel
Below steps apply to cPanel in particular, but if you are using any other email/hosting service, you can ask them for these details.
- Log into your hosting account’s cPanel and follow the instructions below:
- Click on the Email Accounts icon, located under the Email category.
2. Once inside the Email Accounts, click the Set Up Mail Client directory. IMPORTANT! At this point, You should already have a created email account in cPanel.
3. In this page, you should now see POP3 and SMTP details. cPanel, in particular, provides 2 options: Secure SSL/TLS Settings and Non-SSL Settings. It is always recommended to go with Secure settings.
4. Copy the information and paste it to any text editor on your computer or simply leave the page open for further use.
Step 2 — Setting up an Email Account on Outlook.
In this example we will use Outlook 2013, however, the same steps apply to other versions also.
- If you opened Outlook for the first time, you should see a Welcome message. Click Next.
2. You now should see a window with a question Do you want to set up Outlook to connect to an email account?. Choose Yes and click Next.
- (Optional) If this is not the first time you open Outlook and you already have email accounts configured there, to add a new account you need to click File in the upper left corner of the screen.
And then click Add Account to configure a new email account
3. In the next page, you will find 2 options. In this tutorial, we will use Manual setup or additional server types.
Keep in mind that the first option attempts to automatically configure your email. You do not need to fill in server details, only your email and password. However, in most cases, it is recommended to set up the email account manually so all configuration settings would be correct.
Click Next.
4. Now you will need to choose the service for which you are configuring the email account. Choose POP or IMAP and click Next.
5. In this step it is necessary to provide server details (you collected them in Step 1):
- Your Name – This name will be displayed to the recipient when you send your messages, you can choose it yourself.
- Email Address – Fill in the email address you are setting up.
- Account Type – This option depends on you. Most of the email/hosting providers offer to choose between POP3 and IMAP and there is no one right opinion on which one to use. You can learn about the difference between the two protocols here: Differences between POP3 and IMAP. However, for a regular user, it does not make a difference, really. We will choose POP3 in this example.
- For Incoming mail server field please fill in Incoming Server hostname from details collected in Step 1:
- For Outgoing mail server (SMTP) field please fill in Outgoing Server hostname from details collected in Step 1:
- For Logon information use the username and password of your email account at the external email provider:
- Do not forget to check to Remember password checkbox so you wouldn’t need to fill in your password every time.IMPORTANT! Do not click Next just yet! Before that, we need to configure additional service options. Click More Settings …:
6. Click Outgoing Server in the window which popped up.
- Check the My outgoing server (SMTP) requires authentication checkbox. This is necessary if your email/hosting provider requires SMTP authentication.
- Select Log on using and fill in your email account details. Use the username and password of your email account provided by your external email provider:
- Do not forget to check to Remember password checkbox so you wouldn’t need to fill in your password every time. The window should be completed like in the screenshot below. When you are done, click Advanced:
7. In this step, you will need to fill in the Ports of both incoming and outgoing mail servers (You have collected this information in Step 1). In this window you need to:
- For Incoming server field fill in Incoming Server port (depends on which Account type you chose – POP3 or IMAP) from details collected in Step 1:
- For Outgoing server (SMTP) field fill in Outgoing Server port from details collected in Step 1:
- IMPORTANT! If you used the Secure SSL/TLS settings when collecting configuration details from your external email service provider, you MUST check This server requires an encrypted connection (SSL) checkbox and select SSL for Use the following type of encrypted connection field.
Alternatively, if you used the Not secure configuration settings, leave these options unchanged.
- (Optional) Under section Delivery, you can make additional changes related to emails on the original server. By checking to Leave a copy of messages on the server, you will ensure that a copy of each email will be left on the original email server. Basically, you will have 2 copies of the same email. One in Outlook and another one in your email provider platform.
8. When you have everything filled up, click OK.
9. You will then be returned to the previous page. Click Next.
10. Outlook will now automatically check both sending and receiving emails of the email account you have just configured. If both tests are successful you should see results like these:
If you get messages that tests were unsuccessful, please re-check all details in your configuration and when you are sure they are correct and you still get error messages, contact your hosting/email provider for assistance.
Click Close if the tests were successful.
11. After successful configuration of your email account in Outlook you should see this window:
Conclusion
You have learned how to set up an email account on Microsoft Outlook so you could send and receive messages there instead of your original email provider platform. If you have any question please leave a comment below or you can contact us and we will be happy to answer any question.
