Outlook.com SMTP Settings: POP and IMAP Configuration

Outlook.com’s mail servers use standard SMTP, POP, and IMAP settings that work with most third-party email clients (Outlook desktop, Thunderbird, mobile mail apps, and so on).

Settings

• IMAP server: outlook.office365.com, port 993, SSL/TLS
• POP server: outlook.office365.com, port 995, SSL/TLS
• SMTP server: smtp.office365.com, port 587, STARTTLS
• Username: your full email address

Important: Basic Auth Is Being Retired

Microsoft has been phasing out basic authentication (plain username/password) for POP and IMAP access to Outlook.com and Microsoft 365 accounts in favour of OAuth-based modern authentication. If your mail client supports “Sign in with Microsoft” or OAuth, use that instead of typing the password directly into POP/IMAP settings — it’s more secure and less likely to break as Microsoft continues tightening basic auth support. If a client you’re setting up only offers plain username/password IMAP/POP with no OAuth option, check whether it has been updated recently, since older versions may simply stop working. For most people, the simplest path is letting your mail app auto-detect settings by just entering your Outlook.com email address and signing in through the Microsoft login prompt, rather than entering server details manually.

Basic Authentication Status for Outlook.com in 2026 (Updated for 2026)

Worth being precise about which “Basic Auth retirement” this is: Exchange Online (Microsoft 365 business accounts) fully retired Basic Authentication on 16 September 2024. Consumer Outlook.com/Hotmail/Live.com accounts — the ones this guide covers — are on a separate track, and as of 2026 Microsoft’s own Outlook.com-specific support documentation still describes the retirement as upcoming rather than giving a fixed cutoff date, though prompts to re-authenticate via modern sign-in are becoming more common. In practice, that means a POP/IMAP client using a plain username/password today may keep working for now but could stop working with no further warning. The safer path either way is OAuth2 — letting your mail client use “Sign in with Microsoft” rather than typing your password into a POP/IMAP settings screen. Most current mail apps (Outlook desktop and mobile, Thunderbird, Apple Mail) support this for Outlook.com already; if a client only offers plain-password IMAP/POP with no OAuth option, that’s a sign it’s due for an update or replacement rather than something to work around.

Resources

• Microsoft
• Exchange