Outlook Mail Server Settings Guide 2026

This post covers how to set up Outlook for the most common online mail services. It’s a quick reference for ourselves, refreshed for 2026 now that Microsoft has changed how Outlook.com and Microsoft 365 accounts authenticate — the old manual IMAP/POP setup no longer works for those two providers. Feel free to use this information.

Gmail accounts

Before you can add a Gmail account to Outlook, you’ll need to prepare your Gmail account for connecting to Outlook and Office 365 and then import Gmail to Outlook. The most common reason Outlook will fail to add a Gmail account is a missing or incorrect app password — Google no longer supports plain account passwords for third-party mail clients, so you’ll need to generate a 16-character app password from your Google Account security settings first. If you need to find your server settings for your Gmail account, see the POP and IMAP server name reference.

Yahoo accounts

Yahoo retired the old “allow apps that use less secure sign-in” toggle a while back. To send and receive mail with your Yahoo account in Outlook (or any third-party client) now, you’ll need to generate an app password instead:

Sign in at https://mail.yahoo.com, choose your name in the upper right corner, then choose Account Info.
Choose Account security in the left pane.
Turn on 2-step verification if it isn’t already enabled — Yahoo requires this before it will generate app passwords.
Choose Generate app password, pick “Other app”, and use the generated password (not your normal Yahoo password) when Outlook prompts you for credentials.

If you need to find your server settings for your Yahoo account, see the POP and IMAP server name reference.

Outlook.com and Microsoft 365 accounts

This section changed significantly in 2026. Microsoft retired Basic Authentication for Exchange Online and Outlook.com across IMAP, POP, and SMTP AUTH — the rollout started 1 March 2026 and finished by the 30 April 2026 deadline. If you try to manually add an Outlook.com or Microsoft 365 account to a mail client using the old server name, port and password combination, you’ll now get an authentication error (often reported as “Basic authentication is not supported”). App passwords for these accounts stopped working at the same time, since they relied on the same legacy authentication. The classic desktop version of Outlook doesn’t support OAuth (Modern Authentication) for IMAP or POP connections, and Microsoft has said it has no plan to add it. In practice, that means:

If you’re using a Microsoft 365 or Outlook.com account, add it to desktop Outlook using Add Account and sign in normally (Modern Authentication) — don’t use the manual IMAP/POP path for these accounts anymore.
If you specifically need IMAP/POP-style access to an Outlook.com or Microsoft 365 mailbox from a third-party client, use a client that supports OAuth for those protocols (for example, current versions of Thunderbird) instead of legacy Basic Auth.
Outlook on the web and the Outlook mobile apps are unaffected — they’ve always used Modern Authentication.

For reference, the old server settings (no longer usable for manual/Basic Auth setup, but still useful if you’re troubleshooting an OAuth-capable client) were:

Incoming mail server (IMAP): imap-mail.outlook.com, port 993, SSL
Outgoing mail server (SMTP): smtp-mail.outlook.com, port 587, TLS

All other accounts (self-hosted mail, smaller providers, etc.)

For accounts that aren’t Gmail, Yahoo, or Outlook.com/Microsoft 365 — self-hosted mail servers, smaller providers, or business email that still uses plain username/password authentication — you can use Outlook’s manual setup option. Most use IMAP; a few older setups still use POP. You’ll need the incoming and outgoing mail server names, ports, and SSL/TLS settings from your provider before you start. Use the Manual setup or additional server types option to set up your account

Choose Manual setup or additional server types > Next.
Choose POP or IMAP > Next.
Enter the following information:
- Your name and email address
- Account type: usually IMAP
- Incoming mail server
- Outgoing mail server
- User Name: this is your full email address
- Password
Choose More Settings > Outgoing Server and check the box for My outgoing server (SMTP) requires authentication.
On the Advanced tab, enter the port numbers and encryption type your provider gave you. The most common combinations are:
- Incoming server (IMAP): 993, SSL
- Outgoing server (SMTP): 465 or 587, SSL or TLS
Choose OK > Next > Finish.

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Andrew Armstrong

Andrew Armstrong is a UK-based IT professional with 26+ years of hands-on experience in Windows, Windows Server, SCCM/ConfigMgr, Active Directory, PowerShell, and enterprise infrastructure.

He founded TechyGeeksHome in 2010 and has published over 1,500 practical guides covering real-world IT problems and solutions. When not solving IT problems,

Andrew develops free Windows utilities including Ultimate Settings Panel, which has been downloaded over 850,000 times.

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