Phenquestions
You may have already heard of Hotmail upgrading to Outlook.com. You can now get new email IDs related to domain Outlook.com. In fact, you can have both domains - Outlook.com and Hotmail.com related to same account. You can change them interchangeably without having to logging into two different accounts even as mail to all addresses (one address and one/more aliases) are delivered to same account.
However, at the moment, all the features of outlook.com - using aliases to send and receive mail are limited to web interface only.
Can you configure or add an outlook.com alias directly to MS Outlook on desktop? Not at the moment.
I tried using the Microsoft Outlook Connector for Hotmail but it won't recognize Outlook.com aliases as being Hotmail related. But I did find a workaround to receive Outlook.com emails to your Outlook desktop client.
Until Microsoft goes ahead and updates its Outlook Connector, you can use this workaround to check for new emails for all aliases related to your new outlook.com account. For this workaround, let us assume two possible cases for using Outlook.com.
Configure Outlook.com to work with Outlook Desktop - Workaround
CASE 1: You already have a Hotmail account and you created aliases. Also, you've set up new mail to be delivered to: 1) New folder or 2) Same inbox folder. You need not do anything in this case. If not already done, download and install Outlook Connector for Microsoft Outlook and configure your Hotmail account using your primary ID.
Whenever someone sends emails to one of your aliases, they will appear in the inbox or in the specified folders depending upon how you configured it while creating the aliases. And of course, in case of new mail, desktop Outlook folders will be highlighted as usual. But the problem is that you cannot simply hit reply to that email from desktop Outlook. If you do so, the recipient will see your actual Hotmail account ID instead of the alias you should be using. To make the Outlook alias appear in outgoing mails, go to the web interface by typing outlook.com in your browser and reply from there.
CASE 2: You created an Outlook.com account and wish to receive emails to your desktop Outlook. Not possible with the Outlook Connector at the moment. Go and rename the account to Hotmail.com domain. Make sure you select Hotmail.com in the drop down list when renaming.
Having done this, create an alias similar to what your original account was. You may have to wait for 48 hours before you can do that. For example, if your original account was [email protected] and you renamed it to [email protected] (depending upon its availability), you may have to wait for some time before you can create an alias that goes [email protected] You can then configure your desktop Outlook using the Hotmail ID.
Remember that if you create/use a Hotmail alias to setup desktop Outlook account, it won't work as you need the main account ID to sign in. Here too, the desktop Outlook will show you incoming emails for all the aliases in addition to the main account. To make sure that the alias names appear at the recipients end, use the web interface to reply.
Though a tiresome workaround, this will make sure you do not miss out on important, time sensitive emails as every mail will be directed to your desktop Outlook - until Microsoft updates the Outlook Connector.
Please let us know if you are already using some method to configure outlook.com email with Microsoft Outlook desktop email client.
