During the Outlook teams Reddit AMA (Ask Me Anything) it was officially announced, after being asked about IMAP support, that the service is available immediately.
Hey, this is Steve from the Outlook.com team. It wouldn’t be an AMA session without an IMAP question :) I’m excited to announce that starting right now we DO support IMAP, and we wanted you folks to be the first to know. Go check it out.
He then provided the server and setting details to use the protocol on Outlook.com based email accounts.
IMAP
- Incoming IMAP mail server: imap-mail.outlook.com
- Incoming IMAP mail server port: 993
- Encryption: SSL
SMTP
- Outgoing SMTP mail server: smtp-mail.outlook.com
- Outgoing SMTP mail server port: 587
- Encryption: TLS
After revealing this news he went on to add support for OAuth for 3rd party apps and services:
We’re also supporting OAuth so that all sorts of 3rd party apps and services can easily and safely integrate with Outlook.com. We’ll have a blog post up soon with more details, including a description of some partners who are launching support today: TripIt, Sift, Slice, motley*bunch, Unroll.me, OtherInbox, and Context.IO.
What a great way to reveal a highly requested feature but on Reddit where you could then see the Internet spin up talking about it.
Thanks to @TheRomit for the tip.
Update: Here is the IMAP post at the Outlook Blog.
