How to Access a Hotmail Account via IMAP

Previously, if you wanted to use an e-mail client for accessing a Hotmail account, you were stuck with the POP3 protocol, which doesn’t allow you to access all of your mail subfolders. IMAP support was available, but cost extra. So, if you wanted to access your Hotmail folders, you were stuck with using Microsoft products, such as Windows Live Mail client or Microsoft Outlook.

Well, with the recent folding of Hotmail users into Outlook.com, Microsoft has quietly enabled IMAP access to Hotmail accounts for free. Now, you can use any IMAP compatible e-mail client, such as Mozilla Thunderbird.

Here are the settings for accessing a Hotmail account via IMAP:

Incoming server:

  • Server address: “imap-mail.outlook.com”
  • Server port: “993”
  • Encryption type: “SSL”

Outgoing server:

  • Server address: “smtp-mail.outlook.com”
  • Server port: “587”
  • Encryption type: “TLS” (“SSL” can be used if TLS is not an option)