Search Results for: outlook.com

When Microsoft is not attacking Google with cheesy videos and questionable statistics, the software giant is busy trying to use the search company's platforms for its own gain. While we still anxiously await the arrival of Office (without a 365 subscription) on Android, we do have OneNote and Outlook.com, the latter of which is receiving a big update today.

"Our goal is to provide our customers with the best possible email experience, delivering the features that you've been requesting. We've listened hard to the feedback from you and made several improvements that you asked for", says Microsoft's Steve Kafka.

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Despite pitching Exchange ActiveSync as the better protocol, Microsoft has turned the lights on IMAP support for its Outlook.com consumer-oriented email service. The newly added protocol brings along with it a slew of benefits, including support from services like Unroll.me, and an improved user experience for those who connect to Outlook.com from a number of third-party clients such as the Mail app from OS X.

Setting up Outlook.com, using the IMAP protocol, in the OS X Mail app is not a straightforward process, as either the needed configuration settings are missing or the software automatically chooses POP as the unchangeable, de-facto protocol. A bit of trickery might be involved. Here is what you need to know.

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Earlier today Microsoft introduced IMAP support for its Outlook.com email service. The latest addition is designed to allow feature phone users and those who rely on a number of third-party email clients, such as the Mail app from OS X, to take advantage of email sync.

IMAP joins Exchange ActiveSync and POP as the supported Outlook.com protocols and falls between the two, in terms of functionality (EAS is more feature-rich compared to POP). "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", says Outlook.com Protocols principal program manager lead Steve Kafka. "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".

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Google shocked the tech world back in December of 2012 when, out of nowhere, it announced that Google Apps Free Edition was going bye-bye. I was also a bit disappointed to hear about this, as it provided a free way for clubs and small businesses of 10 users or less to leverage the power of Google Apps for their email, calendaring, contacts, etc.

Yet as a consultant to numerous clients supporting clients on the Free edition, who knows the unreasonable expectations they sometimes hold the (free) service to, I can see Google's justification for pruning the bushes here. We can all agree: it was good while it lasted.

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Now that Outlook.com is actually working, Microsoft can redirect its focus on improving the service rather than fixing it. Today, the tech-giant announces that they have improved the management of aliases on the web-based email service.

"Several years ago we launched the ability to rename or to add aliases to your account, which gave important flexibility to manage these changes. But we found that these tasks were a little too monolithic. For example, sometimes you wanted to sign in with one alias but use another to send mail or display on your Xbox. So we started working to break these tasks down to give you more flexibility", says Eric Doerr, Group Program Manager for Microsoft account.

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Microsoft continues to integrate Skype into more of its products, a process that seems slower than it should be. The messaging and calling service is now finding its way into one more property, in this case the web-based email service, Outlook.com.

The new integration is considered a beta release, but is available in multiple international markets -- the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Canada and Brazil. "The Skype for Outlook.com preview makes it easy to connect with your Skype friends right from your Outlook.com inbox", says Skype's Pierre-Eric Jacoupy.

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Microsoft's issues with Outlook.com continue to rumble on. Following last week's server wobble the company has issued an apology for the temporary outage, explaining that problem was a result of a "failure in a caching service that interfaces with devices using Exchange ActiveSync".

The company promises that steps have been taken to ensure that "the service will be more resilient in the future", in a status update posted at 9:34am, August 17. In spite of this, a more recent update, posted at 19:36 -- and still in place at time of writing rolling on into August 18 -- states that "There's a problem with Outlook at the moment".

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There are many things that make an email provider good -- features, spam blocking and of course, reliability. The latter is currently an issue, as the Outlook.com service is down.

As of 12:50pm EST, the web-based email service displays the following message: "We're having a problem accessing email. You might not be able to see all your email messages". It further states that, "We're working on the problem and will provide an update by August 14 2:00 PM. Thank you for your patience". This seems to be very widespread based on chatter around the Internet.

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Social integration is one of the most interesting features of Outlook.com, as it allows users to manage emails and, at the same time, chat with friends on Facebook, Google Talk and Skype. Microsoft started to integrate the latter service in late-April, with the roll-out continuing into the summer and, now, the company announces a new change as the process reaches its final stages.

Microsoft just revealed that, "as part of adding Skype to Outlook.com", users will no longer be able to access the social messaging history through the adjacent folder, as it will be removed "sometime this fall". The feature will still be available, but only through the Messaging panel.

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After nearly two months of using Microsoft’s services almost exclusively, I made the painful decision to switch back to Google for most of my web needs. I say "most" because I’m still using, and enjoying, Outlook.com.

My decision to stick with Microsoft’s webmail service seems well founded, as the company is adding more features all the time. It introduced Skype support two weeks ago, and from today is rolling out the ability to directly message your Gmail-using contacts. Or "friends stuck on Gmail" as Microsoft amusingly phrases it.

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Microsoft has been actively migrating customers from Hotmail to its Outlook.com service over the past six weeks. That migration ends today, as Microsoft announces completion of, not only the big move, but also that the company now has instant success from the latest web-based email offering.

"When Outlook.com came out of preview, it was already the fastest growing email service thanks to your support. The last two months have seen the release of a new, modern Outlook.com calendar, a refreshed Outlook.com app for Android devices, two-factor authentication for your account, new international domains for people around the world, and the release of a preview of Skype calling in Outlook.com" boasts Microsoft's Dick Craddock.

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Microsoft has announced that it is rolling out a preview version of Skype for Outlook.com in the United Kingdom that will allow users to make audio and video calls directly from their inbox.

Available from today, Skype for Outlook.com requires a one-time download of a browser plugin for Internet Explorer, Firefox or Chrome. Once installed, users simply connect Skype to Outlook.com and merge their contacts.

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Microsoft's relentless push for Outlook.com brings an app update to the enemy camp, today -- big move given that Android now represents a large portion of today's mobile market. Two weeks ago, Microsoft unleashed a major calendaring service overhaul.

The interface has been completely revamped and new features come along for the ride. As you may know, Google has pulled support for Exchange ActiveSync, but Microsoft now works around that.

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As someone who switched from Hotmail to Gmail in 2004 and then never looked back, moving to Outlook.com has been quite a weird experience (setting it up was fun in its own right). Some people hate Gmail’s interface, but if you’re used to it, using anything else seems odd.

That said, I’ve adapted to Outlook.com pretty quickly. It feels a bit like going back in time, using an interface similar to the ones I used in the past, but it doesn’t feel dated -- quite the opposite actually -- and I’ve grown to really like it in the short period of time I’ve been using it as my email service.

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I watched an advert for Microsoft’s new webmail service yesterday. It starts by showing a man changing his job from Deliveryman to Stuntman on the website. Next up, there’s a pretty young woman getting married and locking lips with her partner. Afterwards she uses Outlook.com to change her name from Sarah Jones, to Sarah Jones-Brown, and a female friend emails to congratulate her. The advert ends with a voiceover saying "Get email that keeps your friends information up to date automatically".

I thought it was a decent, if unspectacular, ad that gets its message across well. Then I scrolled down to the comments. And oh my, the bigots were out in force. Because, you see, the woman in the video was getting married to -- shock horror -- another woman!

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