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Learn About Connected Accounts

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Applies to: Office 365 for professionals and small businesses, Office 365 for enterprises, Live@edu

You can connect to as many as five e-mail accounts from your cloud-based account. This lets you send, receive, and read e-mail messages from those connected accounts in Outlook Web App. Get started by going to Options > See All Options > Account > Connected Accounts.

Note

This feature may not be available for your account.

Connecting to Other E-Mail Accounts

The account you're connecting to likely allows POP or IMAP access. Some e-mail services require you to enable POP or IMAP access by signing in to the account. Other services allow POP or IMAP access automatically. Before you connect from Outlook Web App, check that you've enabled POP or IMAP access on the account you're connecting to. For information about whether to enable POP or IMAP access for e-mail services that are frequently used, see Turn on POP or IMAP Access to Connect to Another Account.

Post Office Protocol (POP) version 3 allows an e-mail program to pull information from an e-mail server over the Internet and download that information to an e-mail program on your computer or mobile phone. Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) version 4rev1 not only pulls in e-mail from the connected account but also copies any folder or label structure from your connected account onto your computer or mobile phone. For more information about POP and IMAP, see Using POP3 and IMAP4 E-Mail Programs.

Get E-mail from Other Accounts

Sending E-Mail Using the Connected Account's Address

You can reply to or send e-mail from your cloud-based account using the address of a connected account. From the e-mail message, select the e-mail address of the connected account in the From drop-down list. When you send a message using the connected account address, the message is sent by your cloud-based account on behalf of the e-mail address of your connected account. If you're unable to send mail using the address of a connected account, check that you've verified ownership of that account so you can send using that account's address. Under Options > Account > Connected Accounts, click the link for the connected account displayed under the Action column to resend a verification e-mail to your connected account. Then sign in to that account and click the link in the verification e-mail to enable send and reply access using that address from your cloud-based account.

Using Inbox Rules to Sort Downloaded Messages

After you've added a connected account, you can use the Inbox rule Received through this account to move messages from that account to the folder you specify.

  1. To create your rule, click Options > Create an Inbox Rule.
  2. Click New.
  3. In the New Inbox Rule window, click More Options.
  4. Under When the message arrives and, click It was sent or received, and then click Received through this account.
  5. Select the connected account you're creating this rule for.
  6. Under Do the following, select Move the message to folder, and then follow the prompts to select or create a folder to move the message to.
  7. Click Save to finish your rule.

Checking Connected Account Status and E-Mail Download Frequency

To quickly check the status of your connected account, look in the Status column for the selected account in Options > See All Options > Account > Connected Accounts. Or, click Details for the account to get detailed connection status in the Current Status section. The Current Status section shows helpful information about the connected account. If your connected account isn't downloading e-mail, the section can offer information on how to fix the issue. After you make the changes recommended in the Current Status section, click Save, and Outlook Web App will try to download e-mail from the account. We recommend that you resolve the problem with your connected account using the information in the Current Status section instead of deleting the account connection. If you delete and re-create a connection, messages that you downloaded before will be downloaded again.

When you first add a connected account, e-mail is downloaded immediately. After the initial download, e-mail is downloaded from your connected accounts every hour when you’re not signed in to Outlook Web App. When you are signed in to Outlook Web App, e-mail is downloaded more frequently. To download e-mail from your connected accounts at any time, click the Check Messages button at the top of the message list view.

What else do I need to know?

  • If you’re connecting to an account that allows POP access, the default behavior is to keep the e-mail messages both in your connected account's mailbox and in your e-mail in your cloud-based account. However, some services won’t keep a copy in their inbox unless you go to that account's settings and select the option to keep a copy there.
  • If you're connected to a Hotmail account to send and receive e-mail for that account, consider signing in to your Hotmail account every 120 days so your Hotmail account isn't deleted. (To help fight junk e-mail, Hotmail deletes inactive accounts.)
  • You can add a Hotmail, IMAP-enabled, or a POP-enabled e-mail account. If you want to receive mail from a non-Hotmail account that doesn’t support POP or IMAP access, you’ll need to set up e-mail forwarding. Check with your e-mail account provider to see whether it supports e-mail forwarding. If it does, you can forward your e-mail messages from your other account to your cloud-based account.
  • When you connect to an account using POP access, you may not receive all the messages in the other account's Inbox. If you don't, check the settings for POP access on your other account.
  • If you don't see the content you expect from a connected account, you may have set up two accounts using the same user name and password. See "I set up a connection for a non-Hotmail account, but Outlook Web App connected to a Hotmail account instead" in FAQs: Downloading E-Mail from Connected Accounts.

What if I want to know more?