Setting Outlook 2002 and 2003 to use IMAP

With Microsoft Outlook, you can optionally use IMAP connections to read incoming mail. Using IMAP (instead of the more widely used "POP3" method) allows you to keep your messages on our servers instead of downloading them to your computer.

Keeping your messages on our servers can be useful if you read mail two completely different ways. For example, if you use both Outlook and Webmail, each program will share the same Inbox and will therefore know what messages you've read. (If you always read mail using just a single copy of Outlook, using IMAP won't make a difference and probably isn't worth the effort.)

Follow our standard instructions for setting up Outlook 2002 or 2003

You'll first need to follow the standard instructions to set up Outlook 2002 or 2003, with the following two differences:

1. In step 3, choose IMAP (instead of "POP3").
2. In step 7, enter INBOX in the "Root folder path" box. In addition, the "Incoming server (IMAP)" port should be 143, and the "Outgoing server (SMTP)" port should be 587.

If you previously set up your mailbox as a POP3 account in Outlook, you'll unfortunately need to delete that account, then go through the setup instructions again.

Seeing folders other than Inbox

By default, Outlook will only show the Inbox folder. However, IMAP also provides additional folders named Drafts, Sent, and Trash, and you can create other folders using our Webmail system.

To see these other folders in Outlook, you need to "subscribe" to them:

1. Open the Tools menu and choose the IMAP Folders command. The "IMAP Folders" window opens.
2. Click Query.
3. Select the desired folder then click Subscribe. An icon appears next to each subscribed folder.
4. Repeat for any additional folders, as desired.
5. Click OK to close the window.

Note: even though you can use this procedure to display the Trash folder, Outlook will continue to use its own "Deleted Items" folder for deleted messages. Likewise, Outlook will not store drafts and sent mail in the server Drafts and Sent folders. This is a limitation of Outlook 2002 and 2003. You will be able to use Outlook to view items placed in these folders by Webmail, though.

Outlook is now setup to use IMAP

You're finished! Try sending yourself a test e-mail message to make sure it works.