How To: Use your Outlook.com Alias On WP8 (if you have a gmail.com Live ID)

My gmail address is my live ID.  Been that way for about 6 years.  All my Windows Phone account information is registered to it, obviously.  So is my Android stuff.  I was pretty geeked about Outlook.com and I know use it religiously.  So bringing over my gmail to Outlook.com was the no brainer to me, even though it’s just forwarded thru POP.  The problem was trying to receive email to devices.  The auto setup would always pick up the ‘gmail.com‘ for the domain settings and try to set up the gmail account.  Microsoft said very plainly that if you changed your Live ID, you would lose all your account information AND subscriptions.  So I set up an Outlook.com alias.  Problem with the alias is that it isn’t a username and it has no password associated with it so you couldn’t set it up on mobile devices.  Or at least, that’s what we were told.

Enter today, I was playing around with my old Touch Pro and got an idea for something: use the old-school google sync method.

From email+accounts, pick Outlook

Enter an incorrect email address (you can use what I did).  Enter your live ID Password.  Then hit sign in.

The phone is going to tell you that you may have mistake and give you more fields to enter.  This is a good thing.

Enter your outlook alias email address in the email address field and enter your Live ID in the user name field.  Leave the Domain field blank.  Hit Sign In when you’re done.

Now the phone will tell you that it can’t find the settings.  Again, this is a good thing.  Hit Advanced.

Scroll all the way to the end of the form and select show all settings.  Now, you’ll see a Server field.  Enter m.hotmail.com in that field.  Leave the Domain field blank.

Additionally, make sure that you select “server requires encrypted (SSL) connection.”  You can name the account what you want and specify what settings you like.  When you’re done, hit sign in.

This whole thing is important because gmail never synched starred messages properly BUT you can synch flagged messages (which obviously has it’s own pivots), considering that this is now a native exchange account.  That also means you get a faster server-side search for emails not on your device (with sorting options)  You also send messages out via the Outlook.com alias.

Helpful?

– Fight