Outlook.com Tip: Configure on Android and iOS

In a previous tip, I discussed how you configure your new Outlook.com account to work with Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8. (I also discussed doing so with Outlook 2013 in Office 2013 Feature Focus: Exchange ActiveSync.) But what if you use an iPhone, iPad, or Android-based smart phone or tablet?

This one’s for you.

Android

To access your Outlook.com email on an Android-based smart phone or tablet, you’ll need Microsoft’s free Hotmail app, which is available both from Google Play and from Amazon’s AppStore for Android. So let's start with that.

Signing in is easy. During the initial wizard, enter your Outlook.com email address ([email protected]) and then your password normally. The app will then successfully sign-in, and then let you configure how many days of email to download to the device. (You can also disable push and configure email downloading on a schedule or manually.)

Then, in the next screen, you’ll be asked if you’d like to sync contacts and calendar information as well.

The Hotmail app actually only works with mail and contacts directly. But you can find your Outlook.com-based calendar information in Android’s Calendar app. Likewise, contacts are also accessible from the Android People and Phone apps for obvious reasons.

iOS (iPhone, iPad)

Apple uses a centralized accounts mechanism in Settings, and since Outlook.com is a full Exchange ActiveSync (EAS) service, you can use the Exchange account type to configure this account. To do so, visit Settings and then Mail, Contacts, Calendars. Then, tap Add Account.

In the Add Account screen, tap Microsoft Exchange.

In this screen, enter your email address ([email protected]), username ([email protected], same as the email address field), password, and a description (like “Outlook.com” or whatever). You can leave the domain field blank.

Then, tap Next. Settings will verify your sign-in is correct and then add the field Server and correctly auto-fill m.hotmail.com as the address. Tap Next again. You’ll navigate to a screen, called Hotmail, where you will determine what to sync to the device, where you can individually toggle Mail, Contacts, Calendars, and Reminders.

Make any desired changes and tap Save. Settings will add the account, and you can return to this interface later if you’d like to make changes or remove the account.

Your Outlook.com information will now be available from the pertinent iOS apps: Mail for email, Calendar for appointments, and Phone and Contacts for your People-based contacts. (A recently added iOS app, called Reminders, is used for reminders, naturally. In what’s still called Hotmail Calendar, this seems to map to the To-do list; you can see this by visiting the Outlook.com Calendar and choosing the To-do list tab. But I haven’t been able to get that to work.)