Microsoft 365 mail is hosted by Microsoft rather than on our mail servers, so the settings differ from a standard mailbox with us. In most cases you do not enter server names at all — Outlook and your phone discover them automatically.
Outlook on a computer
- Open Outlook and choose Add Account.
- Enter the full email address and continue.
- You are redirected to Microsoft to sign in. Use the password we supplied, or your own if you have changed it.
- Complete any multi-factor prompt.
If Outlook asks for server names, autodiscover is failing — usually a missing DNS record. See below.
Phones and tablets
Add an account of type Microsoft Exchange (not IMAP or POP), enter the address, and sign in when redirected. The Outlook mobile app works too and handles multi-factor more smoothly.
Webmail
Sign in at outlook.office.com with your full address. Nothing to configure.
When setup fails
Nearly always DNS. Microsoft 365 requires specific records on your domain, and if the domain still points its mail at us — or at a previous provider — nothing will connect.
- MX must point at Microsoft, not at our mail servers.
- Autodiscover CNAME must exist, or clients cannot find the server.
- SPF must include Microsoft, or your outgoing mail is treated as spam.
We configure these for you as part of setting up the service, so there is nothing for you to do at the registrar unless your DNS is hosted somewhere we do not control. If that is the case, tell us when you order and we will send you the exact records to add.
You cannot have mail delivered to both Microsoft 365 and a mailbox here. MX records point to one destination. If you are moving to M365, mail stops arriving in your old mailbox at the moment the MX changes — which is why migration order matters.
Moving existing mail across
Changing MX records routes new mail to Microsoft. It does not move the mail you already have.
We migrate everything — mail, folder structure, contacts and calendars — from your existing mailbox into Microsoft 365.
How long it takes depends on how much there is. A mailbox with a few thousand messages moves quickly; one with fifteen years of history takes considerably longer. The copy runs in the background, so you are not locked out while it works.
Tell us roughly how many mailboxes and how much data when you ask, and we will give you a realistic estimate rather than a hopeful one.
Getting help
Open a ticket from the client area with the mailbox address and the exact error. For problems inside Outlook itself once mail is flowing, Microsoft's support has more visibility than we do.
