Outlook.com is out! Now ask the Outlook.com team your questions!

[Nagamasa]

Also: will clean-up contacts function be refreshed? Right now, It only shows three slots--for me right now--two of them are unique contacts, making me only have 1 to choose from.

[Izlude]

edit: sorry clicked the wrong topic in the news post. anyway feedbacks always fine.

lol you're gonna laugh at me, but anyway, the whole "outlook" thing got me reved up for windows 8. consider "izlude" a pending customer. the whole experience is very clean. really liking outlook.

[Walrush]

Some sort of Favicon alert system is needed. The current logo as Favicon does look a little like inbox '0' for no emails.

Something needs to be done about this password chracter limit. It was talked about on the Security Now podcast last week and not favourably. No salting or hashing of email passwords that will soon be tied to one's Microsoft account? That is a serious no-no.

[Guest]

Do you have any plans to allow multiple rules for email sorting? Multiple actions would be really nice too. (although some of them conflict, simply grey out options in that situation!)

If you want to keep it simple for most users, just have an advanced tick box :)

[belto]

i have my old hotmail account which does not work on my mac mini. i get all the setting correct but i cannot download my email. how do i migrate my hotmail account to the new outlook.com without losing any of my settings, etc...?

[andrewbares]

i have my old hotmail account which does not work on my mac mini. i get all the setting correct but i cannot download my email. how do i migrate my hotmail account to the new outlook.com without losing any of my settings, etc...?

Go to Outlook.com, login with your normal Hotmail account, click on your account's name in the top right corner, click "Account Settings", and then there should be a Rename option at the bottom of the page just below the Close Account.

All your settings, SkyDrive data, emails, etc will be kept. You can have your old email address forward to the new outlook one, or have it go to a separate folder in your new outlook account. If you have a Windows Phone, you'll have to completely reset your phone since you can't just change your Live ID. Any apps you purchased will be transferred to the new account without an issue, you'll simply have to redownload them of course.

[belto]

Go to Outlook.com, login with your normal Hotmail account, click on your account's name in the top right corner, click "Account Settings", and then there should be a Rename option at the bottom of the page just below the Close Account.

All your settings, SkyDrive data, emails, etc will be kept. You can have your old email address forward to the new outlook one, or have it go to a separate folder in your new outlook account. If you have a Windows Phone, you'll have to completely reset your phone since you can't just change your Live ID. Any apps you purchased will be transferred to the new account without an issue, you'll simply have to redownload them of course.

thanks for the info, i will try this. again thank you:-)

[JimmyJamesRoS]

I have some People Hub questions and suggestions. People hub for the most part is identical on WP7.5 and Win8 so the same would apply to those also.

Social network integration has one major flaw. Let's say I have 250 people in my Facebook friends and I now have all 250 of them in my People Hub. Out of the 250 friends I would only like to see 20 of them. The only option is to place the 20 contacts into a group instead of choosing the 230 contacts I would rather have removed from my People Hub completely. At this time my People Hub is cluttered with Facebook pages that I follow, I know I will never in my lifetime want to contact a single Facebook page. I have just dealt with it on my phone but now that It's going to be the same on my soon to be new OS and my preferred personal E-Mail I would love the option of hiding hundreds of contacts that I would rather not have to sift through.

Contact editing is another problem I have been frustrated with. I know it might be suppressing to some but I have many friends in their 20's and 30's who refuse to use things like Twitter, Facebook and G+. For these individual's I have to add them into my People Hub myself. Everything about creating and editing contacts works fantastic except for the fact that I can't add a picture of the individual. On my WP I can place a picture but it only shows on that phone. It would be nice if we could add a picture for contacts that we both create and import. On a side note I have no clue if a Facebook or other similar contact can override a contact that I have created on Hotmail. I have yet to actually use the cleanup feature.

Calendar social integration has been great other than I get spammed about people's birthday's. Most of my problems with the calendar would be fixed if we could remove contacts we don't care to have in our People Hub.

My last item has to do with the new @ outlook.com and alias. I was able to get my name @ outlook.com. I made it an alias as I have used my @ hotmail.com for around 9 years or so. I might have missed it but I would love to have the option to make the @ outlook.com my main account and change my old @ hotmail.com to an alias so it will still function as intended for the hundreds of web sites I have used it on.

[registradus]

I have been using Outlook.com for a while and like it a lot more than Hotmail. But I do have a couple issues:

1. I'm not sure if this is the same in other markets, but in Australia I have an annoying header for NineMSN at the top. It has the logo, and then a text link and nothing else. I assume that this will include more links in the final release, but it is really unneccessary. Defeats the purpose of trying to use less space, and really breaks up the design. Also, it will often force the Outlook bar down and it then covers the search box and e-mail subject.
   
2. I read lots of references to twitter integration (even on Outlook.com) but it doesn't seem to exist!
   

Other than that I really like it, keep up the good work!

[Xab]

Any chance you guys can maybe do a beta program for new features for those of us who don't mind the bumps and wanna test out the new features first? Maybe through connect or something? Just a thought.

[Techno_Funky]

Will there be a outlook Android/iOS app, similar to what we have for Gmail and Yahoo for example ?

[Whinges]

Will Hotmail Plus be rebranded?

[Maksim Tretiakov]

So... Where's the Outlook.com team?

[grayscale]

So... Where's the Outlook.com team?

Read the first post.

[PGHammer]

Hello folks! It's been very exciting to see all the great reaction and discussion going on ever since we launched the new Outlook.com email service last week. We've also seen a number of questions pop up along the way as well. So we'd like to open up this thread for you guys to ask us, the Outlook.com team, your questions and provide feedback. We'll keep this open for a couple of days to let the questions flow in. We'll then close it up and respond to your questions via a video reply (meaning we won't directly reply to your comments on the thread). We do expect a lot of questions so we'll do our best to answer everything as best we can, but we might not get to every specific question. Also, we can't comment on any future product features or releases, so do keep that in mind.

With that, let us know what you think about Outlook.com, what you'd like to see, what issues you're having and just anything in general you'd like to ask about the product!

The Outlook.com Team

Hello folks! It's been very exciting to see all the great reaction and discussion going on ever since we launched the new Outlook.com email service last week. We've also seen a number of questions pop up along the way as well. So we'd like to open up this thread for you guys to ask us, the Outlook.com team, your questions and provide feedback. We'll keep this open for a couple of days to let the questions flow in. We'll then close it up and respond to your questions via a video reply (meaning we won't directly reply to your comments on the thread). We do expect a lot of questions so we'll do our best to answer everything as best we can, but we might not get to every specific question. Also, we can't comment on any future product features or releases, so do keep that in mind.

With that, let us know what you think about Outlook.com, what you'd like to see, what issues you're having and just anything in general you'd like to ask about the product!

The Outlook.com Team

Thanks.

As someone that is using Outlook.com in a tag-team with Outlook 2013, I find the ability to access Outlook.com accounts in Outlook *sans add-ins* a major equalizer compared to your competition (especially GMail and Yahoo). One reason I had let my Hotmail account languish was the add-in requirement in Outlook (which has been my default e-mail client since Outlook 97). It was, in fact, especially galling when I was able to use Outlook with GMail right away (and without requiring add-ins).

Rory Zane Ross - the reason Yahoo Mail isn't one of those options (at least in North America) is due to the decision by Yahoo itself to keep their POP3 mail option (Yahoo Mail Plus) as a monetizer (North America is, in fact, the only region on the planet where this is true).Yahoo has never even offered an add-in for Outlook - any version of Outlook. If you want to read your Yahoo Mail offline, you must use the (previously Yahoo-owned) Zimbra Desktop. In short, it's not the fault of the Outlook.com team - or Microsoft, for that matter.

[koolguy]

Better POP and IMAP integration. At least detailed info about what is there and what is not.

[Gee.B]

@PGHammer : Yahoo! Mail does support IMAP, it works for free and Plus account. Initially they supported IMAP on mobile but they actually extended the option to everyone. They just don't promote it because they don't officially support it.

Learn more here

[markizvonschnitzel]

I really have nothing to ask, other than congratulate on great job.

[Sir Topham Hatt]

Here is my biggest issue/transition...I very much liked "archive" on Gmail...is there a similar feature on Outlook.com? I havent found it yet/want it!

You can do this already by creating/using folders.

My question:

I am desperate to move from Gmail. The only thing that stops me is when sending email from another email address (such as me@mywebsite.com), then viewing the email in Outlook states the sender as "me@outlook.com on behalf of me@mywebsite.com".

In Gmail, you can set outgoing mail servers to stop this happening. Will this be a feature of Outlook.com? Also asked in Post 22.

Yes, I've looked at Live Domains but that's a bit too complicated for what I need. I can live without IMAP access but this stops me migrating.

Also, will the Android "Hotmail" app be rebranded / redesigned? If so, looking forward to it.

Good job :) (Y)

[Silversee]

Guys, I'd like to add one more comment:

I never thought I'd say this about a Webmail experience, but I think I actually prefer Outlook.com to any of Microsoft's rich-client email options (!).

I find the Mail app in Windows 8 to be too limiting and dumbed down (even for a mobile client), while the new Outlook 2013 interface is so visually busy (and thus mentally fatiguing) that it is just hard to use (also, Outlook 2013 rules still don't seem to sync with cloud-based rules or the Sweep features--a deal breaker, really). Finally, Windows Live Mail is clearly on life support (sadly).

I had been concerned about how I would accomplish "real" email on a Windows RT device, but Outlook.com seems like a legitimate option. I only wish that Outlook.com's design aesthetic had influenced the new Microsoft Office products more (or simply at all). They could learn a thing or two from you guys.

[Gee.B]

Illustrating another frustration:

[Team Outlook]

Hey guys, these are all great questions. We'll keep this open until the end of the day today. We'll then close it up so we can get to answering!

[Orange Battery]

How quickly do you anticipate that Outlook.com will become a major competition to the other big email services? Im really liking Outlook.com but I love Gmails options and customisations - I want to move over to Outlook because I have the names I want but I don't want to wait for a year before the service has developed enough.

Im sure you guys are really experienced and wont be moving at the pace of a new startup with little experience of dealing with the requirements of a major email service however email is important and not something I can honestly see people waiting for.

Loving your work so far. Cant wait for better colour flagging.

[]SK[]

I assume

Illustrating another frustration:

What if you need to go to the last page of emails and you have 100,000 emails in your inbox?

[]SK[]

Is there a way to move aliases to their own account?

Example:

I setup a Live account to use other Microsoft services. However I signed up with a personal domain email. me@example.com. I logged into Outlook.com using this Live account and added three aliases. Can I split the alias off so it becomes its own full account or at least change it so that one of the aliases becomes my main Live login username?